Very First Croatian Craft Tea Created From Family Tradition
January the 11th, 2022 - Move aside Croatian craft beer! The very first Croatian craft tea has come to life through a long family tradition that has been turned into a business. Odores Silentii offers something entirely new to the Croatian market.
As Poslovni Dnevnik/Marta Duic writes, Odores Silentii is a domestic brand of teas and accessories for serving it, behind which lies a warm family business story. According to Magdalena Sekulic, the first ideas and products were created as hobbies and owing to the personal enjoyment of natural home-made plants and teas back during 2018.
Today, Odores Silentii has gradually developed from a hobby into a family business producing the first Croatian craft tea, and all of their family members are involved in the work. For them, 2021 they say, was a turning point and a year full of development in which they defined clear guidelines for their brand and the way in which they do business. Behind them lies a year of investment, both in terms of material equipment for processing and personalisation, and also when it comes to product development.
Healthy habits...
“Instructed in how to do it all by our grandparents, we collected plants or grew them in our garden, dried them out and enjoyed consuming them. For centuries now, people have collected plants and consumed them through various types of tea drinks, and what grows best in their climate tends to suit them best. The cultivation of medicinal herbs based on the economies of scale and high efficiency has brought tea consumption to an instant level (prepare, consume, move on) and thus dominates the market. Our strategy, however, is different and our products aren't comparable with such a model of tea consumption. We've personally experienced the fact that tea consumption is a healthy habit not only from the aspect of fluid consumption,'' said Magdalena Sekulic, who is behind the Odores Silentii brand making the first Croatian craft tea.
She explained that back at the end of 2020, they teamed up with the family company Bioplanta from Kriz, which grows organic medicinal plants on more than ten hectares of land.
“Odores Silentii deals with hand-picked teas from production in the Bioplant fields. After harvesting and drying out, the teas are hand-picked to separate the ones which are top quality. The amount of manual labour represents the largest share of resources in the entire production chain. This is best illustrated by the example that a kilogram of Odores Silentii tea from lemon balm, chamomile or mint requires two to four hours of manual screening.
All other parts of the production process rely on totally manual work (the processing of sets by grinding and coating), packaging, and at the end - personalisation. From all the above, we believe that Odores Silentii is the first Croatian craft tea offered on the market,'' Sekulic pointed out.
New models
They offer Croatian craft tea packaged in both cans and bags, tea blends with dried organic fruit, personalised gift packages (engraving), wooden chests, gift boxes with teas and accessories and sets for serving, and they're also working on a new collection of special products that combine candles with tea.
"We hope that 2022 will be a new milestone for our business, especially in the development of our sales channels. Our production quantities and the way we personalise our products aren't applicable to traditional retail chains. We have several ideas about alternative ways of accessing the market primarily through social media and creating quality content relying on direct sales and sales models based on so-called ''try and buy'' principles,'' concluded Magdalena Sekulic.
For more, check out Made in Croatia.
Pampa-tea: Koprivnica-Based Company Targets Asian Market
As Lucija Spiljak/Poslovni Dnevnik writes on the 3rd of September, 2020, the teas of the Koprivnica-based sole proprietorship Pampa-tea, which has been researching, processing and producing medicinal herbs and teas since 2000, has now started to conquer the "native land" of tea - the Asian market.
Pampa-tea's products first went on sale in Japan and Singapore, and the Croatian company recently signed product distributions in Hong Kong, China, Thailand, Taiwan, Vietnam, Macau and South Korea. Interested customers especially liked the new line of popular teas in pyramid packs, as well as the amusing names in English.
"These are the countries where tea comes from, so they were looking for the best. Their ''tea journey'' brought them to us, which we're proud of because they were convinced of our quality. The feedback has been very positive and we expect a new order soon,'' says the owner of the Pampa-tea, Kresimir Krznaric.
These Croatian teas also go to America and even all the way to Australia
After Asia, they are moving their sights, they say, to Australia and North and South America. The story of the Pampa-tea began way back in 1996 when in Argentina, in the village of Pampa del Infierno, they saw old gauchos preparing tea. Then their idea of producing medicinal herbs and teas such as lemon balm, mint, calendula, St. John's wort in his native Podravina, where it is a centuries-old tradition, was born.
"In the beginning, we relied on the development and cultivation of raw materials, ie medicinal plants. We had our own plots where we learned how to grow medicinal herbs profitably. Due to the increase in sales and demand, we turned to the sale and distribution of teas. We've transferred technologies and knowledge to subcontractors who now grow certain types of plants for our needs, while they sell surplus plants to other companies,'' explained Krznaric, who is otherwise a very learned agricultural engineer by profession.
All members of the immediate family are involved in the work of the family business; Kresimir's brother Domagoj is a graphic technology engineer by profession, his father is a graduate economist, and his mother is a food technologist, so together they cover all areas.
They offer 18 types of blends of homemade teas in bulk packaging, five types of blends of homemade teas in modern pyramidal packaging, and chamomile tea (100 g) and nettle tea (60 g) in bulk. They process 4-5 tonnes of medicinal herbs a year to make their popular teas.
"Every year we increase out production by about 20 percent,'' revealed Krznaric. They are characterised by a rich, fine taste and aroma so that almost all ages can enjoy them. The advantage is that the teas are not ground, but chopped to keep the plant, leaf and flower as natural as possible.
Chopped dried plant, leaf, flower or dried fruit contains much more essential oils and medicinal components than tea in filter bags does.
Here in Croatia, their products with memorable names - Mrsavko, Bronhitko, Smirko, Bakine chamomile - are available in more than 300 specialised stores and pharmacies/herbal pharmacies, and they recently signed a contract with the shopping giant, Konzum. They also work with the wholesale drugstore Medika d.d. and in parallel develop sales through the Kupicaj webshop and the international TEA2SHOP webshop. They want to further develop, grow, continue to improve their production and gradually introduce new products.
"Every year we record a steady growth in demand and sales on the Croatian market and abroad. By the end of the year, we'll meet the financial result set at the beginning of the year, despite the pandemic,'' said the owner of the Pampa-tea.
The Krznaric family advises people to be responsible and to strengthen their immunity by, among other things, drinking tea.
For more, follow Made in Croatia.
For the latest travel info, bookmark our main travel info article, which is updated daily.
Read the Croatian Travel Update in your language - now available in 24 languages
