April the 8th, 2021 - The Solin company Include, the first domestic manufacturer of smart benches owned by entrepreneur Ivan Mrvos, has increased its production capacity by five times.

As Novac/Bernard Ivezic writes, on Monday, the Solin startup started mass-producing smart benches and smart waste bins. In one shift a year, 1,300 of them will be made. By comparison, since back in 2016, meaning since the establishment of production, until the end of last year, the Solin company Include has made a little less than 1,600 such items.

The Solin company Include's founder and director Ivan Mrvos has stated that they have launched a new production line worth 1.4 million kuna in total, half of which is co-financed by HBOR, in order to meet the expected growth in demand this year and in the years ahead of us.

''We've already filled our production capacities for the next three to four months with orders from Germany, Singapore and Canada, and as vaccination and the opening up of the economies abroad continue to progress, there's a possibility that we'll be able to open a second shift during the summer months,'' noted Mrvos.

His plan, as he explained, is to increase the Solin company Include's sales to 2.5 million euros during 2021. He expects that within that amount of 2.5 million euros, the new series of Steora smart benches alone will manage to bring in around one million euros, and growth should be generated by their Terra smart waste bins. The company had revenue of about 900,000 euros last year, despite the pandemic. That result, according to Mrvos, is proof that even in dire times, there remains a demand for their smart benches.

''Now we're going one step further and offering smart bins to cities. We have competition, but our bins are 45 percent cheaper than other, similar products and instead of seven to eight years, the cities can return their investment on them in half the time,'' said Mrvos.

He added that they have made more progress with the new generation of smart benches. In addition to the new design, new technology has also been developed, and the new Croatian smart benches can now compete with ordinary, classic benches in terms of price. In the last year and a half alone, Include has invested three million kuna in the development of the new Steora series. A team of 22 experts worked on it, including a doctor of science.

''We can offer more affordable products also because we now have our own serial production. We have machines, a paint shop and other things, and we're employing ten people on the new line,'' concluded entrepreneur Ivan Mrvos.

For more on Croatian-made products and domestic companies, visit Made in Croatia.

April the 2nd, 2021 - Nanobit founder Alan Sumina has made no effort to hide his disgust and frustration with the state of Croatia's draconian love of red tape and slowing down progress, taking to Facebook to voice his feelings.

As Poslovni Dnevnik writes, Nanobit founder Alan Sumina has commented on the slowness of Croatian bureaucracy and a system which appears to seek to actively prevent progress being made in business in this country. He posted a status on Facebook in which he described the process of opening a new company in Croatia. He spent as long as two weeks on the process and still hasn’t solved everything yet. He had to personally go to the counters at various offices, to the notary, to the bank, etc. An endless and mind numbing process those of us who live here know only too well.

Here is Nanobit founder Alan Sumina's Facebook status translated and delivered in full:

"It seems to me that twelve years ago it was easier to open a company here than it is today.

It's truly frightening to what extent the bureaucracy has destroyed this country and the extent to which it continues to destroy it. I'm just trying to open a new company, of course I naively thought that a power of attorney could be given to sort it all out on my behalf, but no, no. One must make a personal pilgrimage to the public notary, to the bank, to FINA, to the office for statistics… Then, ah, you don't need a stamp, but you do still need it, so don't end up just not making a stamp [because you'll still end up needing it], I was told that by the public notary).

Then comes the register of real owners. So, the sole founder needs to be entered into the court register, the matter couldn't be simpler than it is, but that needs to be entered into the register of beneficial owners which is dealt with by no more and no less than that fictional agency called FINA.

Great, I gave the power of attorney to my accountant to do it - but no, no, he can't do that. It has to be done in person. Or go and notarise the power of attorney at the public notary.

And so, as I have been for two weeks now, I'm still touring various counters just to start up a new company.

What's wrong here? Where is the abolition of those stamps? I've opened companies in the United Kingdom, Hungary and Romania. I've never had to stamp anything anywhere. I never had to go around the counters anywhere. This really is ab absolute horror, and it's not that we haven't moved forward, it's that we're actually going backwards!''

For more on Croatian entrepreneurs, doing business in Croatia and more, follow our business section.

April the 1st, 2021 - The Macedonian Interior Ministry (MUP) has handed the Croatian company Dubina, which is an enterprise which deals with underwater operations and is headquartered in the Dalmatian city of Split, an award.

As Novac writes, last week in Skopje, the Croatian company Dubina and its director Gordan Zupa received an award from the Ministry of the Interior of Macedonia for its special contribution and mutual cooperation.

The plaque was awarded to the Split-based enterprise on the occasion of the celebration of forty years of the special police of Macedonia, and the handing over of the award itself took place in the base of "special forces" in that nearby country. The award ceremony was attended by the Prime Minister of Macedonia, Zoran Zaev, and Oliver Spasovski, the Macedonian Minister of the Interior.

The Croatian company Dubina and its main man Gordan Zupa received this special recognition for their long-term cooperation with the special police of Macedonia, as namely, this company has been participating in the training of special units in the field of underwater activities for many years now.

''Receiving this medal is an exceptional honor for me, as well as for the entire company, and I'd like to thank all the members of the Special Police of Macedonia for their successful long-term cooperation. I'm looking forward to the challenges that lie ahead of us and future joint activities,'' said the director of the Croatian company Dubina, Gordan Zupa, when receiving this special recognition.

Dubina, founded by Zupa exactly twenty years ago, has evolved from a company created ''in the garage'' to a widely recognised leader in the field of underwater work. To date, they have participated in the construction of several nautical marinas throughout the Adriatic region, are specialists in underwater ship maintenance and are authorised to officially inspect ships for most international registries.

Over recent years, experts from this company have been engaged in almost all demanding underwater operations across the Adriatic, and can boast of many successfully completed tasks abroad - from those done in Macedonia's Lake Ohrid to the beautiful bays of Malta.

For more, follow our business section.

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March the 31st, 2021 - The new Zagreb Rimac Automobili office is now up and running, with yet more enormous plans lying ahead of Livno-born businessman Mate Rimac.

Mate Rimac is the protagonist of far one of the country's most fascinating and indeed inspiring entrepreneurial stories. In a country where ''you can't do that'' continues to reign strong when it comes to business, investments and actually getting ideas off the ground, Rimac's dogged determination and drive is something to be greatly admired.

The self-proclaimed lover of tech who has rather miraculously managed to make something work in Croatia which would have been deemed impossible before, has attracted the likes of German automotive giant Porsche to Croatia, having them invest eye-watering amounts of money into his company and even giving the Croatian Government a lesson on how to attract the car industry and as such foreign investment.

There seems to be little Mate Rimac can't turn his hand to and succeed in, and as the brand new Rimac campus and the move to a new space in Jankomir dominates his company's ''life'' at the moment, the new Zagreb Rimac Automobili office opening is yet another item ticked off his long list.

As Poslovni Dnevnik writes, Rimac Automobili has opened a new development office in Zagreb, which already has about 400 employees working there.

The new 4,400-square-metre Zagreb Rimac Automobili office covers two floors and ''houses'' experts from a number of different departments working on the development of battery systems, electric drive components, software solutions and autonomous driving systems. The new location on the ground floor is also home to three innovative R&D laboratories.

"This new Zagreb Rimac Automobili office has made it possible to group teams based on the projects they're currently working on - whether it's internal Rimac projects or technology we're developing for other carmakers," the company's official Facebook page stated.

For more on Mate Rimac and other Croatian entrepreneurs and companies, follow Made in Croatia and our business section. For all current coronavirus information specific to Croatia, including travel and border rules, as well as testing centres up and down the country, make sure to bookmark this page.

ZAGREB, 30 March, 2021 - Croatian companies are showing great interest in the Egyptian market which can be the gate to a market of close to one billion people, Croatian Foreign Minister Gordan Grlić Radman said at the start of a two-day visit to the most populous Arab country.

A country with which Croatia has traditionally friendly relations, based on long-lasting understanding and partnership, Egypt is one of the most important economic partners to Croatia not only in Africa but in the Middle East as well, the minister said.

Grlić Radman sees possibilities for cooperation in the oil and wood-processing industries, energy, shipbuilding, defence industry and infrastructure works.

The minister started his visit to Egypt by paying tribute at the Croatian memorial cemetery in El Shatt, the place where almost 30,000 Croats, mostly from Dalmatia, the Dalmatian hinterland and islands, were evacuated to during World War II.

"856 of them died here and that is why we laid wreaths and lit candles for them today," said the minister.

He also visited the Suez Canal, an economically very important zone that attracts important investments.

The delegation accompanying Grlić Radman includes business people and economists.

A Croatian-Egyptian business forum is to be held on Wednesday, with more than 120 business people attending, and the event will be opened by Grlić Radman and his Egyptian counterpart Sameh Shoukry.

Cooperation with Egypt is important to Croatia also because of Egypt's relations with the European Union and membership in the Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa, Grlić Radman said.

For more about business in Croatia, follow TCN's dedicated page.

March the 30th, 2021 - The Sibenik company Cantabile is going from strength to strength despite the ongoing coronavirus crisis thanks to the Sibenik business zone - Podi.

As Poslovni Dnevnik/Darko Bicak writes, the Dalmatian city of Sibenik's Podi business zone, despite the coronavirus crisis, is doing well to manage to maintain the economic activity of its enterprises, and news of new investments is coming in almost on a monthly basis.

One of those enterprises is the Sibenik company Cantabile, which purchased 5,853 square metres of land within the business zone, with plans to build its new and unified plant for the production of confectionery products there.

As Ante Gulin, the owner and director of the Sibenik company Cantabile revealed, this company was established a decade ago and initially, through its exclusive catering brand Moderato Coffee & Cakes, was engaged in the production of sweets, but for the last four or five years their main sales channel has been HoReCa for clients from Istria to Dubrovnik, and recently they've been present here in Zagreb with their range.

"We realised that we needed to standardise our production because only that can guarantee quality and recognition out there on the market. We're currently present at three production sites in Sibenik, which we now want to combine with a new production facility into one.

If you work only for yourself, then we're talking about relatively small quantities, but when you add the exceptional seasonality that is a reality in Sibenik and along the entire Adriatic coast, then it's clear that you're in trouble with that attitude, both because of the quantities and because of the workforce as things run seasonally and you have to make great efforts to be able to get your hands on quality employees every year,'' said Gulin when discussing the reasons as to why this company decided to step out more strongly into the wholesale market.

Currently, 20 percent of the Sibenik company Cantabile's sales are accounted for by their own capacities, and 80 percent by HoReCa, with a tendency for further growth.

"We have a quality product based on quality, Croatian raw materials - lavender, cherries, olives, carob, etc, all of which the market recognises and seeks. Now, with a small capacity and dislocated production, we aren't able to complete the entire system of procurement and control of those local raw materials, but with this investment, we'll manage to achieve this,'' explained Gulin.

The new plant in Sibenik should be operational by the end of this year, and construction work in Podi is expected to begin soon. As the owner of the Sibenik company Cantabile explained, the value of the construction works stands at around five million kuna, and with the equipping of the plant with machines and equipment, this investment will rise to 12 to 14 million kuna.

The new plant should employ about 50 new people, but their specific number, which could be even higher, will still depend on the state of the market, the tourist season, and especially on the situation regarding the coronavirus crisis and the state of the economy and society as a whole.

The planned area of ​​the Sibenik business zone is 550 hectares, and so far 130 hectares have been built, while about 100 hectares are currently available for construction. There are currently about 50 enterprises operating within the zone, who employed 1,350 workers at the end of last year. This figure sadly at the beginning of 2021 due to the continuing pandemic.

However, as Jakov Terzanovic, the director of Podi pointed out, the number of employees from last year should soon return with new investments, and by the end of the year they will surpass those old numbers. There are currently 10 active contracts with various enterprises who will likely build their respective plants within this zone this year, and most of them will start doing business there too.

At the beginning of the year, it was announced that the plot of 70 thousand square metres was snapped up by the largest Croatian retailer of sanitary equipment, Feroterm, and the other, covering 11 thousand square metres, was purchased by SeaTech. Feroterm plans to build a large logistics centre for the whole of Dalmatia in Podi, and the German investor SeaTech would build a factory in Sibenik for the production of ship rescue and service equipment.

In addition to the Sibenik company Cantabile, the land in Podi has been bought by a company named Rock, which comes from the construction sector, and on a plot of 7977 square metres, it intends to build a hall for the production of building elements with storage and office space. Terzanovic also announced that a new tender for the sale of a plot of 5,682 square metres is currently being prepared.

For more on Croatian companies and doing business in Croatia, follow our business section. For current coronavirus information specific to Croatia, including border and travel rules, as well testing centres up and down the country, bookmark this page.

March the 28th, 2021 - The Croatian Q Agency is planning on employing a significant number of people despite the continued economic woes caused by the ongoing coronavirus pandemic.

As Poslovni Dnevnik writes, quite a lot of positive news has been flowing out of the Croatian IT sector lately, and some of that news comes directly from the Croatian Q agency, which has recently announced that it plans to increase its team by about 100 new experts in the coming year, which will increase the number of employees by over 50 percent.

The Zagreb-based Q agency has otherwise invested heavily in its sales team throughout the pandemic-dominated year, resulting in a large number of new clients and opportunities, which is why they're now looking for new and quality professionals to work on yet more of their projects.

"We're extremely proud of our team and our culture, and we always welcome new quality people with open arms. We currently have 15 positions open on our website and employment portals, but the actual number of people we need is much higher and we intend to open new additional positions in the near future,'' stated Tom Cvitkovic of the Croatian Q agency.

The local software company has already opened up quite a number of positions for developers in various technologies, both web and mobile - from PHP and JavaScript through Flutter to Ruby. The Croatian Q agency is also looking for experts in UX / UI design, DevOps and a number of QA engineers with experience in various ways of testing applications (apps).

The Croatian Q agency currently has over 180 experts working there, with offices in Zagreb, New York, Belfast and Zurich, and the list of clients it has worked for and with includes global brands, including Novartis, Coca Cola, Manpower and Volkswagen.

The company recently found itself on the list of 1,000 fastest growing companies in Europe for the second time in a row, and last year it was rated one of the 20 best web development companies in the world by Clutch, the world's leading independent IT ranking agency.

For more, follow our business section. For current coronavirus information specific to Croatia, including travel and border rules, as well as testing centres across the country, bookmark this page.

March the 26th, 2021 - Croatian PM Andrej Plenkovic has confirmed that the government's support in the form of job preservation financial aid will continue to be paid out to companies which qualify for it during the month of April as the pandemic rages on.

As Poslovni Dnevnik/Ana Blaskovic writes, government measures to support the domestic economy due to the impact of the ongoing coronavirus pandemic on businesses will continue throughout the month of April.

On top of that, the reimbursement of electricity bills to all citizens affected by the Petrinja earthquake which struck back at the very end of 2020, as well as the suspension of HAC toll fee collections along the Zagreb-Sisak motorway will be extended. All of the above was announced by PM Andrej Plenkovic following a recently held cabinet meeting.

"The 4,000 kuna job preservation measure will continue throughout April for all Croatian economic entities that are able to request this type of support according to the set out criteria," PM Andrej Plenkovic confirmed, adding that the government would instruct the Croatian Employment Service (CES) to continue with paying out these government measures to preserve jobs.

For those who have been prevented from doing business due to the anti-epidemic restrictions in the fight against the spread of SARS-CoV-2, the state will continue to reimburse all fixed costs.

PM Andrej Plenkovic also recalled the fact that the measures had managed to preserve the employment of many people over the last, horrendously challenging year, adding that he believed that this would be confirmed by data on the total number of insured persons at the Croatian Employment Service at the end of March 2021.

"Through the measures in which we've invested more than 10 billion kuna so far, the government has preserved jobs and employment and enabled business entites and their owners to overcome this continuing crisis," he said.

In addition, the Croatian Government decided to extend the compensation of electricity costs in earthquake-stricken Banovina for April, all of which will be taken care of by HEP.

For current information on coronavirus specific to Croatia, including travel and border rules, as well as testing centres up and down the country, bookmark this page.

March the 25th, 2021 - The Zagreb company Bajkmont is going from strength to strength in its expansion, having worked with enormous names such as Mitsubishi, Hitachi and more.

As Poslovni Dnevnik/Darko Bicak writes, the European aviation consortium Airbus, Germany's BMW, the Japanese Mitsubishi and the French railways (SNCF) are just some of the big names and regular customers of the Zagreb company Bajkmont, which has just completed a European co-financed project to build its new factory in Rugvica.

As Miroslav Bajkovec, Deputy Director of the Zagreb company Bajmont pointed out, this family company has strategically focused its business on several sectors and on exports in order to maintain stability and business continuity.

"Such a business organisation enables stability and business continuity, because when one industry comes to a standstill, another one grows. For example, last year there was a decline in demand in the automotive and aerospace industries, but there was growth for railways, energy and environmental protection, and especially the IT industry for which the company is doing more and more work.

The company is no longer small, but it isn't too big either, so we're flexible and we can quickly adapt to the requirements demanded by our customers and the market conditions,'' said Bajkovec.

Although the construction sector is one of the Zagreb company Bajkmont's main customers, they're also focused as suppliers across several other industries: environmental protection, energy, petrochemicals, aerospace and automotive, railways, IT industry and logistics.

Although they've long been mainly focused on the Croatian market, over the last five years or so, a serious step has been made to foreign markets where, as they pointed out, Bajkmont has positioned itself as a renowned manufacturer of quality products with customers who have significantly larger orders than the company can currently accept. Their main export market is the European Union (EU), and individually they mostly export to France, Germany, Sweden, Austria and Italy.

"Over the last couple of years, we've been exporting to the USA, for example, attractive steel structures for museums in Washington and Los Angeles, and projects in Canada, Central America such as El Salvador, steel structures for geothermal power plants, and a fusion reactor in France - ITER, then to Qatar, Canada and Japan,'' explained Miroslav Bajkovec.

This impressive Croatian company has also delivered structures to a number of environmental and waste treatment plant projects for Japan’s huge companies Hitachi and Mitsubishi, and closer to home in Europe over in the United Kingdom, they worked on a major Buckinghamshire waste incinerator project.

The company also worked on waste management in France, for their regular customers in the segment of the production of technological equipment for waste sorting plants and structures for petrochemical plants.

“We're currently completing steel structures for the plants of another new waste sorting plant in Paris, and this is our second sorting plant in Paris out of a total of 11 in France. I would also mention the new Nestle Purina plant in the United States, the geothermal power plant in El Salvador, the stone processing plant in Sweden…

Here on the Croatian market, we're completing works on the production and assembly of the structure for the Pampas stadium in Osijek, and last year we performed the construction for the new terminal in the Port of Ploce,'' noted the deputy director of the Zagreb company Bajkmont.

Today, along with the founder's father, the company is run by his sons Miroslav and Ivan. Of the two employees, the company has grown to today's 150. Back in pre-pandemic 2019, they generated 70 million kuna in revenue, of which 65 percent was generated from abroad, and such a trend was maintained in the past year.

In order to remain competitive on the ever-demanding market, the company decided to invest in a new plant that should soon, in stages, start production. As Bajkovec himself explained, this is a project with a total value of 75 million kuna, of which they managed to withdraw 14.7 million kuna in grants from the European Regional Development Fund.

It regards a plant which will cover 15,000 square metres that will enable them to strengthen their overall production capacities, ensure better production technological capabilities and even more pronounced competitiveness on the global market.

For more on Croatian companies, follow our business section.

March the 22nd, 2021 - Croatian entrepreneur Mijo Pasalic, best known as being the owner of the successful company Apfel, has built apartments for his employees in Makarska.

As Poslovni Dnevnik writes, Croatian entrepreneur Mijo Pasalic, the owner of the Apfel company, has constructed two apartment buildings in the coastal Dalmatian town of Makarska with apartments that were purchased at half price by his workers who hadn't managed to get their housing issues resolved and until recently were tenants in unenviable situations. He thus resolved a very significant existential issue for thirteen of his company's employees.

Given that we haven't heard of a similar case in more than thirty years of the existence of independent Croatia, and we don't know whether or not anything similar was ever done by any other employer in the area, Vecernji list went down to Makarska to talk to Croatian entrepreneur Mijo Pasalic and his son Matko, the CEO of Apfel.

''On that day we were celebrating 25 years of Apfel's existence. This is a family business, and all of us, the whole family, have a rule of conduct when it comes to doing business, and that is to give back a lot to the local community, ie the areas of Makarska and the Makarska Riviera. This is where we function, this is where we make the biggest profit and we think it's just normal to give back a part of it. I think that's how it should work and, to be honest, it's actually how we like it to be,'' explained Mijo Pasalic, who has helped a lot in public life in Makarska through various associations, either in sports, culture, or through various humanitarian actions.

However, they decided to take a step forward and, despite the crisis year that is behind us all and the uncertain future, specifically help their workers in resolving the main existential, housing issue that they could not resolve on their own.

''Makarska is very expensive to live in and many people, despite what they do, can't solve their housing issues if their parents weren't the ones to have previously solved it. We came up with the idea to help our workers out by building two apartment buildings and making the price acceptable to them. One square metre in our apartments cost us around 1450 euros, the land alone cost us 250 euros per square mere, and a square metre of an apartment will cost our workers a lot less: from 650 to 950 euros,'' said Mijo Pasalic, who is very happy that now thirteen families of his workers resolved their housing issues.

They have already signed contracts and have since become the owners of the 60-square-metre apartments in the two new buildings constructed by Croatian entrepreneur Mijo Pasalic.

For more on Croatian entrepreneurs and Croatian companies, follow our business section.