July the 1st, 2022 - The well known Croatian Bluesun hotel chain which is based in Dalmatia has invested an enormous 45 million euros back into its impressive capacities, renovating approximately 800 rooms.

As Poslovni Dnevnik writes, summer is here and the height of the tourist season is rapidly approaching. As such, Bluesun Hotels & Resorts, one of the leading hotel chains in all of the Republic of Croatia, has invested more than 45 million euros in the renovation of six properties in its portfolio. The investment resulted in the renovation of almost 800 rooms in the Bluesun Hotel Elaphusa, Bluesun Hotel Borak, Bluesun Holiday Village Bonaca in Bol on the island of Brac, Bluesun Hotel Maestral, Bluesun Hotel Soline in Brela and Residence Kastelet in Tucepi.

The Bluesun hotel chain, with more than sixty hotels under its belt, points out that they managed to make the investment in less than half a year, in very challenging times and a during years marked not only by the coronavirus crisis, but also by rising prices owing to inflation and the ongoing horrendous war in Ukraine which broke out earlier this year following Russian invasion.

They also stated that when revamping the Maestral Hotel in Brela, they paid a lot of attention to the preservation of architecture, to the extent that they worked closely with conservators in order to avoid mismatching with the historical and emblematic typical Dalmatian architecture of the area.

All of the investment work, worth more than 45 million euros, was carried out by local construction companies, the Bluesun hotel chain made sure to note, saying they believed it was important to focus on local talent who best understood the environment in which the works are being carried out. Radnik from Krizevci, Kamgrad and Krekic-Avangard worked on the renovation of six of this company's hotels, while the main designer was the company Stabilnost, who also provided their expert supervision of the projects as they were carried out.

"With this investment, we're paying tribute to the people, the local economy, the community, history and the flawless Adriatic coast. We'd like to say a sincere thank you to the partners and our exceptional team who brought us to where we are today. It's amazing what we've achieved,'' said Mubarak Al-Khalifa, CEO.

For more, make sure to check out our dedicated business section.

June the 27th, 2022 - The Osijek company Barrage is set to open yet another office, this time in Nasice, and employ even more workers. The move being made by this software company will surely help ongoing Eastern Croatian demography issues.

As Poslovni Dnevnik/Josipa Ban writes, the Osijek company Barrage, founded a mere six years ago, should open an office in Nasice by September this year, in addition to their exisitng office in the City of Osijek.

This company has been growing both in terms of revenue and number of employees since its establishment. Back in 2016 they started out with 5 million kuna in revenue and ended in 20 million kuna in consolidated revenue, as well as 8 million kuna earned in 2021. They decided open their office in a small Slavonian town of only 14,000 residents because they noticed that this is a city where they have the talent they need.

Plans in Nasice

"Through the Croatian Association of Linux Users (HULK), which has a long tradition, they showed interest in software and we estimated that no other place in the area has the potential we need," explained Luka Striskovic, the director of Legal Affairs and Human Resources within the Osijek company Barrage.

Six engineers have already been employed by the company, and a total of ten should be working there by the end of the year. Work on the landscaping should be completed soon, but with the move of engineers currently working from home, they will wait until the end of summer, ie September.

This company is engaged in a wide range of software activities, which makes them specific here on the domestic market; as they deal with the development of custom software systems, the development of data centers and digital products, and it's a fact that by the end of this year they plan to increase their number of employees from the current 108 to 150.

The increase in the number of workers should come as no surprise given the number of projects the Osijek company Barrage is currently working on and developing, especially given the fact that this is a company that generates 99 percent of its revenue on foreign markets.

One of the projects is the development of the digital product Travelspot for business travel management. The other is Roango, a platform specialising in hiring professionals in the ICT sector. Both of these platforms were created during the coronavirus crisis and during lockdown, in response to the problems they themselves faced.

While they predict that this year, Barrage's business results will be better than last year’s, they're still looking at 2023 with a healthy dose of caution.

A less than certain 2023...

“We need to be moderately optimistic because the current phase of financial planning comes down more to prophecies than it does to stable planning. Looking at the global economy, there's definitely a difficult time ahead of us,'' pointed out the director of legal affairs and human resources of the company, whose philosophy is that healthy local patriotism can result in something big.

"We believe that a lot can be done here in Slavonia. In many areas, such as industry and agriculture, Slavonia has been struggling for years. We're ready to change all that by enabling people to get a job here at home and not have to head elsewhere,'' concluded Striskovic, noting that their upcoming office in Nasice is the first step towards that.

For more, make sure to check out our dedicated Made in Croatia section.

June the 24th, 2022 - The Croatian company AD Plastik has contracted a job which will last for nine years worth a massive 859 million kuna.

As Poslovni Dnevnik/Darko Bicak writes, the most important Croatian player in the production of auto parts, AD Plastik Group, has contracted new deals with the Stellantis Group for the European market, with expected revenues of 85.9 million euros over the projected duration of the project, which is nine years.

Stellantis NV is a multinational car manufacturing corporation founded only in 2021 based on a cross-border merger in a 50-50 ratio between the Italian-American conglomerate Fiat Chrysler Automobiles (FCA) and the French PSA Group. The company is headquartered in Amsterdam, and last year they reported operating income of 15.3 billion euros.

Stellantis' core business is the design, development, production and sales of cars from its sixteen brands: Abarth, Alfa Romeo, Chrysler, Citroën, Dodge, DS, Fiat, Fiat Professional, Jeep, Lancia, Maserati, Mopar, Opel, Peugeot, Ram and Vauxhall.

At the time of the merger, Stellantis had approximately 300,000 employees and a presence in more than 130 countries with production facilities in 30 countries. This is a significant step forward for the Croatian company AD Plastik, which has faced challenges due to the war in Ukraine and the consequent EU sanctions against Russia.

Namely, the company based in Solin, Russia, has two factories, where it generated as much as 27% of its total revenue. Back in 2021, the Group generated more than 305 million kuna in revenue in Russia. There is no forecast for 2022 owing to the ongoing dire situation in Ukraine following Russian invasion in February this year.

Their main customers on the Russian market were Renault and Volkswagen, which hold half of the market there. Both companies suspended operations in Russia, a move which was also reflected within the Croatian company AD Plastik.

Marinko Dosen, President of the Management Board of AD Plastik, recently pointed out that the shutdowns are temporary, but also that it's difficult to predict the final impact on their business in the Russian market, and that AD Plastik's Russian factories are ready to continue production.

For more, make sure to check out our business section.

June the 21st, 2022 - The Croatian company ReversingLabs has won a prestigious award across the pond in San Francisco.

As Poslovni Dnevnik writes, Croatian technology companies have popped up more and more recently and they are only continuing to succeed. The latest in a series is the Global InfoSec Award won by the Croatian company ReversingLabs, which is a real leader in software supply chain security development.

The Croatian company ReversingLabs received the award for the best product in the field of application security at the RSA 2022 conference held recently in San Francisco, specifically for their product called secure.software, a solution to protect the process of the continuous delivery of both containers and software packages.

“We're honoured to be able to receive this prestigious Cyber ​​Security Award and be recognised by top judges. Threats in the supply chain and problems with unauthorised software changes continue to plague companies. Despite growing awareness, many people are still unsure how to respond to these threats. Through our secure.software solution, we provide companies with ease and security regarding all versions of software they deliver,'' said Mario Vuksan, the co-founder and CEO of the Croatian company ReversingLabs.

This is not the only award this successful company, which built the world's largest malware database through a development centre right here in the City of Zagreb, has won this year. There are a few more on the list that have won in the area of ​​software security assurance.

This, the latest award for another Croatian company, is more than enough to provide yet another spring in the steps of many of the enterprises in this country which are gaining international recognition and as such placing this country on the tech and startup map.

For more on Croatian companies, entrepreneurs, innovations and more, make sure to check out our dedicated Made in Croatia section.

June the 18th, 2022 - The Adris Group has announced its massive 3.2 billion kuna investment plans which cover everything from digitialisation to some well known hotels in both Zagreb and Split.

As Poslovni Dnevnik/Jadranka Dozan writes, at last week's general meeting, the Adris Group voted on a proposal for the payment of dividends, which are somewhat more generous than they were last year. During the first week of July, shareholders will receive a payment of 15.50 kuna per share (compared to last year's 12.5 kuna per share and no dividends to speak of whatsoever the year before that), which means that around 254 million kuna will be directed to dividends from accumulated retained earnings from previous years.

In his concluding comment on the business results of the Adris Group and its main components (tourism, insurance and healthy food), CEO Marko Remenar said that the company is operationally and financially ready to take further business steps and engage in the continuation of "active dividend policy".

An ambitious set of plans

In addition to a "well-diversified portfolio of jobs", Remenar also underlined the high investment potential and the ambitious list of the company's prepared investments. For the period until 2024 (including this year), their investment plans are worth an enormous 3.2 billion kuna, and four-fifths of those investments, or about 2.5 billion kuna, relate to the tourism part of the portfolio, which in the case of the Adris Group primarily means the development of the luxury segment tourism.

This year and over the next two years, on average, more than 800 million kuna will be invested in this sector alone, and as the Adris Group's spokesman Predrag Grubic noted, most of that refers to the renovation of some Zagreb hotels (along with Panorama, which is already in the process of renovation, the other one will be Westin) as well as Hotel Marjan in Split, and they'll also continue to invest in camps and resorts. The three-year projections for the insurance sector envisage investments worth 410 million kuna, and in that sense, Croatia osiguranje's focus is being placed primarily on investments in digitalisation.

IT in general accounts for a significant share of the Adris Group's investments, and their current plan to invest around half a billion kuna in business digitalisation by 2025 speaks in favour of this. In terms of the sectors themselves, the three-year plan includes 230 million kuna of investments in the business area of ​​healthy food, ie Cromaris. In the aforementioned investment cycle of 3.2 billion kuna, "possible acquisitions aren't included", Grubic explained.

According to the parliamentary presentation of the Adris Group's results and business activities, over the past two years, despite the uncertainties caused by the coronavirus pandemic, almost 840 million kuna of capital investments were made. Compared to the pre-crisis year of 2019, investment activities continued at a solid pace (450 million in 2020 and 390 million last year), and in the coming period it should be further accelerated. Given that the company is still actually indebted in a low sense, the investment potential is unquestionable. Thanks to a strong recovery in operating profit, which again exceeded an impressive 1 billion kuna last year, the Adris Group entered this year with a debt ratio (net debt to EBITDA) of a mere 0.8.

The management boards of Adris' companies gave their shareholders a brief overview of the main features of how business went during the first four months of this year, and the presented data indicates further improvements in terms of results. As such, Croatia osiguranje (insurance) recorded slightly faster sales growth compared to 5.6 percent growth in the total market, which further strengthened its share here on the domestic market. In the first four months of 2022, the gross written premium of CO was higher by seven percent than it was last year, while net profit was higher by nine percent. In the tourism segment, the first third of this year was marked by strong growth in both sales revenues and physical indicators.

Compared to 82 million kuna in sales revenue back during the first four months of last year, by the end of April this year, they reached a huge 188 million kuna, with the number of occupied units being 2.5 times higher. The state of bookings and reservations at the beginning of June has significantly improved, with Istrian facilities, but also those down in Dubrovnik, exceeding the figures from the pre-pandemic, record year of 2019. 

For more, check out our dedicated business section.

ZAGREB, 16 June 2022 - Over the next year, Croatian companies will be among the EU companies hardest hit by the consequences of the war in Ukraine, the European Investment Bank (EIB) says in its latest report.

"Firms in countries closer to Ukraine and Russia, such as Hungary, Poland, Latvia and Lithuania, will feel the pressure. Moreover, firms in Greece, Croatia and Spain will also be more affected than the EU average," says the report, entitled "How bad is the Ukraine war for the European recovery?"

The EIB published a ranking of countries whose companies face the greatest risk from the current situation. The most vulnerable companies are those in Greece, while those in Croatia rank seventh in terms of the risk of losses and bankruptcy among the 27 EU member states.

The EIB noted that EU companies, particularly small ones, were already weakened by the COVID-19 crisis.

"The war will exacerbate firms’ vulnerability through three channels: (1) a reduction in exports, (2) lower profit due to higher energy prices, and (3) difficulty finding funding as banks avoid risk," the report says.

According to the EIB, Croatian companies will be mostly affected by increasing energy prices.

"Firm-level simulations conducted by the European Investment Bank (EIB) suggest the proportion of firms losing money will increase from 8% to 15% in one year, and that the share of firms at risk of default will rise from 10% to 17% over the same period," the bank said.

For more, check out our business section.

June the 15th, 2022 - The Croatian company Nanobit has been busy developing the game for the Netflix reality dating show, which will certainly put the international spotlight on this quite remarkable Croatian company.

As Poslovni Dnevnik/Marta Duic writes, the Croatian company Nanobit and the massive Netflix platform are jointly developing a mobile game for fans of the reality dating show ''Too Hot To Handle'', which will be shown on Netflix in 2023.

To speak more precisely, ''Too Hot to Handle'' is a lifestyle simulation game based on the popular Netflix series, it's a game developed by no less than the Croatian company Nanobit, and next year it will arrive on mobile platforms and will be available for play to Netflix users around the world.

Thanks to Nanobit's vast expertise with narrative games, players are provided with a unique experience and they can participate in the virtual season of Netflix's popular dating show.

“We will be presenting the game during Netflix’s virtual fan festival, Geeked Week. It's a game that will show the spirit of the TV series with exciting drama and events,'' explained Alan Sumina, the CEO of Nanobit.

There are an array of highly successful Croatian companies popping up left, right and centre, but some of them have really stood out from the crowd and we'd be more than correct in saying that the wildly successful Nanobit is one of them. The Croatian company Nanobit is the leading domestic studio for the development and publishing of mobile games. It is based in the City of Zagreb, it has 29 titles released, with 10 applications and 19 games and more than 220 million downloads to its name.

Since September 2020, it has been part of the large Swedish group, Stillfront. The fact that a Croatian-made game will be showcased on a platform as massive as Netflix will do wonders for not only the exposure of this particular enterprise, but for Croatia as a whole.

For more, make sure to check out Made in Croatia.

June the 14th, 2022 - German business owners are beginning to look at the Croatian business climate a bit more optimistically than they have done so far, which is good news for Croatian companies.

As Poslovni Dnevnik/Marija Brnic writes, a mere three percent of German companies operating here in the Republic of Croatia are concerned about their own businesses, which is a better result than in previous years and better than in the rest of Central and Eastern Europe (CEE), where in this year's German-Croatian Chamber of Industry and Commerce research (AHK), nine percent of respondents rate their business opportunities as bad.

In the seventeen years that this survey has been being conducted here in Croatia, this year, as pointed out by AHK President Thomas Sichla, the largest number of companies said they would re-elect Croatia for business, accounting for 84 percent among a total of 105 respondents. This means that German business owners are clearly seeing the Croatian business climate in a far better light than they had done in the past.

When compared to the pre-pandemic year of 2019, that's a thirty percent better result. The current economic situation here in Croatia is also assessed as the best so far, only 26 percent see it as worse, while in 2021, that share stood at a rather unimpressive 50, and in 2019 - at 61 percent.

For the first time ever, soaring energy prices and the lack of skilled labour currently available in the country are cited as the biggest risk to a company's operations in Croatia. Thomas Sichla explained the need and importance of a predictable tax system for doing stable business.

One of the biggest challenges this year will be hiring skilled and qualified employees, and according to the survey, 42 percent of companies expect to increase their numbers, which is more than in previous years.

Half of those companies intend to solve the problem of the shortage of workers through further employee education, and 39 percent by increasing the wages they're willing to pay their employees to above the market average. For next year, AHK is expecting positive effect on Croatia following its entry into the Eurozone, as it will facilitate business operations and reduce currency risks.

For more, make sure to check out our dedicated business section.

ZAGREB, 10 June 2022-  The Ministry of Economy and Sustainable Development has invited Croatian companies to express interest in microelectronics projects and to be engaged in solving the problem of chip shortages and reducing dependence on imports from Asia, the Croatian Chamber of Commerce (HGK) said on Friday.

HGK and its Microelectronics and Semiconductors Group initiated the inclusion of Croatian companies in the European IPCE program (Important Projects of Common European Interest), which was achieved in coordination with the Permanent Representation in the EU and the Ministry of Economy and Sustainable Development.

According to HGK, Croatian companies are also contributing to the efforts to address the issue of chip shortages and reducing dependence on imports from Asia through the implementation of the EU Industrial Strategy.

The call for expressions of interest for microelectronics projects is open until 8 July and includes the design, development and production of processes, chips, semiconductor substrates and related technologies.

HGK recalled that it is rare today that a device does not include chips, so for example there are 50 to 150 chips in an average car, and as their production was halted with the closing down of plants due to the pandemic, a shortage in chips occurred.

At the same time, the demand for all types of electronic devices has increased worldwide, and with the reopening of plants, many industries have faced a shortage of chips.

A possible solution for this is to develop a new generation of microelectronics, but also to return and boost production in Europe, HGK said.

"An opportunity for Croatian companies exists within the IPCEI and in new types of design and the use of new types of advanced materials. These are significant tools that can help keep Europe from lagging behind Asia and the United States in this segment," said the president of the microelectronics and semi-conductors group within HGK, Srđan Kovačević.

Kovačević of the Orqa company said that the company had recently concluded a cooperation agreement with the faculties of electrical engineering and computing in Osijek and Zagreb on the design of a specialised chip for unmanned systems.

One of the foundations to resolve problems in chip supply chains is the Chips Act, and the Croatian Chamber of Commerce is the contact point for it.

HGK added that in 2020 Croatia was among the first signatories of the declaration on processors and semiconductor technologies, which calls for investments of around €145 billion in boosting the development of the European microelectronics and semiconductor sector in the next two to three years, which is  20% of the European Recovery and Resilience Program.

For more, check out our business section.

June the 8th, 2022 - The Croatian company Rasco's Lynx charge electric cleaners are set to be delivered to Israel. This business move will certainly place this successful Croatian enterprise even more firmly on the map as a manufacturer and exporter abroad.

As Poslovni Dnevnik writes, after failing to hold the 2020 fair due to the global coronavirus pandemic, Europe’s largest utility equipment fair finally manage to make a welcome return in full glory last week. Munich's IFAT also has the epithet of the world's largest fair for environmental technologies, as sustainability in the use of resources and reduction of harmful effects on the climate were the main topics of this year's fair.

The Croatian company Rasco, which is a well known utility equipment manufacturer, participated among 2,984 exhibitors from as many as 59 countries. As sustainable development is an important part of the Croatian company Rasco's overall aim and strategy, IFAT has served as the ideal framework for the introduction of the new Lynx charge electric cleaners.

“Electrification has become the dominant development strategy in the utility equipment industry. There is a strong interest of both cities and utility/communal companies in the procurement of electric vehicles, especially city cleaners/road sweepers. This trend is in line with the new vision of urban management and turning to technologies which have a reduced environmental impact.

We believe that the Lynx charge has an advantage over competitors in the segment of compact road sweepers/cleaners because from the very beginning it was conceived and developed as a vehicle with two types of drives (diesel and electric), without compromising cleaning efficiency, comfort and autonomy,'' stated Rasco's CEO, Ivan Franicevic.

In addition to numerous contacts with potential distributors and end customers, a contract was signed at the fair for the distribution of the Croatian company Rasco's vehicles for the Israeli market. The contract was concluded with Gad-El Municipal Equipment Ltd, which has over 30 years of experience in the import, distribution and service of utility equipment under its belt.

The fair was otherwise visited by 119,000 visitors from 155 countries.

For more, make sure to check out Made in Croatia.