February the 23rd, 2021 - There has been a lot of advancement when it comes to Croatian robotic systems and Croatian-made robots in general, with progress constantly being made and the eye on Croatia looking ever more strongly at what is being designed and produced.

As Poslovni Dnevnik/Suzana Varosanec writes, Dok-ing, a well known and now leading Croatian company in the field of the development and production of remote-controlled systems for humanitarian demining, underground mining and other types of crisis management, has delivered a unique command and communication centre with a multifunctional Croatian robotic system for crisis situations to the Ministry of the Interior (MUP).

This Croatian robotic system is already being used by the State Intervention Unit of Civil Protection Zagreb, and this is otherwise the first of three Dok-ing deliveries to the Ministry of the Interior, part of the project of the modernisation of the country's fire fighting capabilities, an undertaking worth a massive 218 million kuna. The aforementioned Dok-ing deliveries are scheduled for the months of April and August for the south and east of the country.

Once all three systems are completed, the Republic of Croatia will be able to meet its obligations under the European Union's Civil Protection System through assistance in the event of major disasters and disasters with nuclear, chemical and biological threats.

This Croatian robotic system has already proven its strength and overall capability during its involvements following various accidents in Russia and in several countries across Asia and Europe, and its delivery to two nearby countries, Austria and Montenegro, for their respective needs as nations, is now being thoroughly prepared.

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As Novac/Bernard Ivezic writes on the 6th of November, 2020, the Zagreb-based company DOK-ING, a manufacturer of Croatian robots, is one of the world's ten largest manufacturers of demining robots. It has opened a company in South Korea and the new subsidiary, which will support and maintain Croatian robots for customers on the South Korean market, is part of this company's strategic plan to expand its operations across Asia this year and next year.

DOK-ING plans to open a branch in China after South Korea, and dicsussions surrounding entering the Chinese market, as has since been learned, have progressed. Gordan Pesic, head of sales and business development at DOK-ING, says they have opened a new company with a strategic partner.

''We're constantly looking for strategic partners. This is how we build a distribution and sales network, and this is especially interesting for us at the moment in Asia, where the demand for robots is growing, and by entering the South Korean market, through partnership, we have opportunities for new collaborations,'' explained Pesic.

He stated that DOK-ING sold its first MV-4 demining robot to the South Korean army last year and delivered the same back in May this year. It was their first job on the market there. In the meantime, he added, DOK-ING won a new tender in which the army ordered two more Croatian robots for the purpose of demining. The value of the first contract stood at a massive 5.3 million kuna, and the value of the new one is around the 12 million kuna mark. These two new Croatian robots will be delivered next year.

DOK-ING's Croatian robots are part of the beginning of a new unit within the South Korean military whose goal is to deal with remote and robotic demining methods and other engineering jobs. In addition to delivering robots, the job involves education. The first Croatian robot is already in use in the demilitarised zone between South and North Korea.

''We entered South Korea strategically, considering that we sold several robots there last year and this year. As a development company, the closer we are to the customer and the better we can understand their plans and needs, the better we can offer solutions and robots,'' noted Pesic.

Along with South Korea, DOK-ING has been cooperating the most with the United States this year. And there, their biggest customer is the army. Last year, the Zagreb manufacturer delivered six Croatian robots to the US Army, and by the middle of this year it had delivered three more.

Pesic says that they are recording good results in other business segments as well, especially in ore mining robots. This year, the Zagreb company received special recognition in Russia, where, thanks to the XLPD robot, the efficiency of ore extraction rose up to 43 percent in hard-to-reach-areas. These hard-to-reach locations make up a third of uranium deposits, so new contracts are likely to keep on coming to this successful Croatian company.

''We expect that 2020 and 2021 will be record-breaking, because we will have large deliveries,'' concluded Pesic.

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STEMI says that the ongoing coronavirus crisis has increased the prices of inputs by up to 20 and even 30 percent, and extended the procurement deadlines by two to three times. Croatian robots are wanted in the US!

As Poslovni Dnevnik/Bernard Ivezic writes on the 21st of July, 2020 the domestic startup STEMI set off on Tuesday with the first deliveries of its robots to California, the state where the famous Silicon Valley is located. More than 50 American schools located from California to Texas and Arizona, all the way to Florida, Connecticut and New Jersey, bought some Croatian educational robots in a package with educational content for STEM education around two months ago.

This is one of the greatest Croatian successes in adapting business to the conditions of the "new normal" that developed as a result of the coronavirus pandemic. Marin Troselj, the co-founder and director of STEMI, says that he almost had a nervous breakdown in March, because their work simply stopped completely.

Back at the end of last year, STEMI raised 319,000 euros or 2.4 million kuna of capital through Funderbeam SEE in order to expand to the American market in 2020.

"In March, we started selling and in the first three weeks we reached as much as 20 percent of the sales target for this year, and then quarantines started and schools from the USA started calling us and cancelling their orders," Troselj recalls.

He says they immediately changed their strategy that fourth week. They stepped up their communication through digital channels with American schools, introduced a series of changes and prepared for the next opportunity. It opened for them in May.

He states that schools in the US have money, they're very interested in STEM and they continue to invest. Even those who aren't currently buying robots are buying laptops intensively so that their students can work from home. Some schools have therefore frozen their budgets for other things as they wait for September to see how the situation with the coronavirus pandemic develops. Troselj says that the most important thing for them now is to deliver all the contracted orders, and emphasises that, as things seem at the moment, they will manage to achieve that.

"We were also a little lucky, because culturally, schools in the United States are like kindergartens, they also serve to look after children while their parents work so that they're still in function with them," says Troselj. He adds that the transformation of the company in such a short time has been very challenging indeed, not only in terms of sales but also in communication to investors and in production, as well as planning for future development. He states that STEMI now communicates with major investors on a daily basis, and with the bigger ones on a monthly basis. In addition, they are currently preparing to send out a quarterly report.

"We didn't reach the set goals for this quarter, but we couldn't have predicted the coronavirus pandemic. However, investors have an understanding, because we inform them in detail about everything we're doing and that's why we get to enjoy their support,'' says Troselj. In production and planning for future development, he states that the coronavirus crisis has increased the prices of inputs by up to 20 and even 30 percent, and extended the procurement deadlines by two to three times. He points out that some hardware factories in China have had to shut down, others have slowed down the pace of their deliveries, and transportation has slowed.

"The biggest challenge was the fact that we were supposed to start our production in May, and we were just starting a real 'new normal' sale and we couldn't immediately know how many robots we needed to produce," says Troselj.

He explains that they didn't want to overcrowd the parts warehouse, nor did they want to question the deliveries. In addition, before the coronavirus struck Croatia, they planned to go to China for a short time and personally perform some of the necessary tests before delivering the parts.

This way, he says, they had to hire an R&D company from Shenzhen to do the job for them. He adds that they intend to continue to adapt.

"Some schools have even increased their orders from us, because they're conducting education from home, so they ordered additional robots. However, we're already looking for space for growth in programmes that aren't related to hardware,'' concludes Troselj.

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