Croatian products are known for their high quality, and the jump from market stand to the leaders of the market is a praiseworthy one.

As Vedran Balen/VL/Poslovni Dnevnik writes on the 28th of October, 2018, as many as seven thousand pallets with more than six million lamps and candles are produced each year by this Croatian company. 

The products find themselves on both the domestic and foreign markets and originate from from the small settlement of Zadubravlje near Slavonski Brod, and the company in question, Primax, has been the leading manufacturer of these products in Croatia for a great many years.

On the eve of the All Saints' Day, the company has their hands very much full, as one can easily imagine. The company's co-owner and director Robert Pandža stated that although he doesn't know for sure whether or not his company is the first in Croatia, he knows it works extremely hard. He added that every European region has its own idea of ​​how such candles and lamps should look, and they therefore try to satisfy and adapt to the often varying needs of a large market.

The Slavonski Brod native started work in this field way back in 1994, when just he and his wife ran the business. They started out with very humble beginnings, more specifically with a small stall on the market, eventually establishing a different development phase and managing to successfully adapt these Croatian products to the often ever-changing and demanding market conditions.

They started to import cosmetics and supply perfumeries and similar types of stores, of which there were a great many in Croatia at that time. They started to work on plastic sheeting, and then continued to expand yet further upon seeing that such a move had been very well received and was doing well. After numerous business ventures, they eventually decided to focus exclusively on production.

Today, Primax does exceptionally well and has some fifty employees who work in three shifts, their own production and storage area covers a handsome ​​2,000 square metres. During the course of a quarter of a century of their existence, the company has even changed its location on seven different occasions, mainly when they were more engaged in commercial activities as opposed to production. Years of work and valuable experience made them realise that they needed some serious production capacity, and a very serious approach to such a business. Thus, five years ago, they invested 14 million kuna of their own funds in the construction and the proper equipping of a new production hall in the village of Zadubravlje. After that, the production was all set up and ready for business, quite literally.

"It's not easy to produce six million pieces. To increase production again, we'll need to invest a lot again because candles require a large storage space. In this business, the biggest percentage of sales takes place within a month or two before All Saints Day, but production is already going on in February. The rotation cycle is similar to that of agriculture,'' explained Pandža.

As they purchased land one year earlier, their application for a subsidy was denied on the grounds that they had already started investing. Namely, only those who hadn't actually invested at the time could be nominated for the tender, so they remained without support. The only incentives they received were 300,000 kuna from European funds for the introduction of new software, 250,000 kuna from the Ministry of Entrepreneurship and Crafts for the improvement of production, and 100,000 kuna from Brod-Poavina County for the purchase of new machines.

"In Croatia, the main problem is the relationship with entrepreneurship. If we managed to get forty percent of that multi-million investment, we'd have yet another new line and a better position on the market today, and the workers would be more satisfied and they'd also be better paid. Otherwise, the general trend is a positive one and the situation is much better today than it was a few years ago.We're just not satisfied with the outcome,'' Pandža stated.

In addition to candles and lamps, they also produce PE foil from recycled or original material and packaging, and their annual turnover stands at around thirty million kuna. Their EBITDA ranges from 1.3 to 1.5 million kuna, while pure profit is about 300,000 kuna. About 35 percent of the company's production is exported to the European market, including France, Ireland, Germany, Austria, Belgium, Denmark, and Finland, with a tendency for further growth.

Ultimately, exports should grow to more than fifty percent.

Want to keep up with what's going on in the world of business in Croatia? Follow our business page and our Made in Croatia page for news on Croatia's many successful companies, products, and entrepreneurs.

Click here for the original article by Vedran Balen/VL on Poslovni Dnevnik

HEP's Distribution System Operator (ODS) plans for investing in Croatia include more than 60 million kuna by 2021 in Hvar alone.

As Darko Bicak/Poslovni Dnevnik writes on the 27th of October, 2018, in the period between 2018 to 2021, HEP Group will be investing in Croatia almost six billion kuna in the power grid throughout Croatia, as was recently announced in Stari Grad, Hvar.

HEP has pointed out that by investing in Croatia such a large sum, of which approximately four billion kuna will be poured into distribution and more than 1.8 billion kuna into the transmission network, HEP will create the proper preconditions for the further development of the Croatian economy, the country's tourism, and the security of the supply of both existing and future consumers throughout Croatia.

In the coastal areas and islands alone, HEP intends to invest about 1.2 billion kuna by 2021, this cash injection will directly contribute to the security of existing and future customers, have a significant impact on the development of tourism and the economy, and will also aid in the intended creation of a better quality of life and to the population survival of the country's many islands.

Of this huge amount, almost one billion kuna will be spent on the country's power grid, on renewable energy sources, and on more fueling stations for electric vehicles on the Adriatic.

HEP has emphasised that Croatian companies are very much involved in the implementation of the aforementioned large investments, and that these investments have been confirmed to be one of the most important drivers of the Croatian economy. The HEP-Operator Distribution System (HEP ODS) is planning to invest as much as 800 million kuna in the distribution network in the country's coastal areas in the period between 2019 and 2021, while over the coming decade, the plan is to invest a massive total of two billion kuna.

Investing in Croatia - and its islands

During the same period, HEP ODS plans to lay down 33 kilometres of submarine cables at a cost of about 43 million kuna, while for the period between 2022-2028, they plan to lay down 124 kilometres of submarine cables, totaling about 161 million kuna, or about 200 million kuna in the next 10 years.

An additional 339 million kuna will be invested by the Croatian Transmission System Operator (HOPS) by 2021, in exchange for high voltage submarine cables. In the Dalmatian network alone in 2018, HEP invested a massive 238 million kuna, and a total of about 500 million kuna was invested in the system of the entire coast.

HEP ODS plans to invest more than 60 million kuna into Hvar alone by 2021. These investments will include the reconstruction of TS Stari Grad, and then the reconstruction of the network on the southeastern part of the island with 15 TSs. The most significant investment of 40 million kuna will go to the construction of TS Hvar. In addition, the laying of the Podgorica submarine cable will also take place, at a value of 12 million kuna.

 Click here for the original article by Darko Bicak for Poslovni Dnevnik

Interested in more stories about investing in Croatia? Follow the TCN business page. 

Is Eastern Croatia in for an economic boost thanks to a massive investment from a big company located just over the border in Bosnia and Herzegovina?

''Changes in any system can't take place overnight and it takes a lot of patience and work to make the results visible'', states Matea Jerić, now running three hotels in Croatia.

Will Uljanik be saved? Minister Horvat is in negotiations with four potential investors to replace Danko Končar as a partner.

The Croatian National Bank estimates that the number of workers in the next twenty years in Croatia will be reduced by half a million.

At its peak back in 1990, the company had 250 employees and an annual turnover of more than 250 million kuna.

The project is currently in the process of conceptual solution drafting.

Can Croatia follow the shining examples of Denmark and Estonia and move forward in digitisation?

The average salary in Croatia is three times lower than the typical wage in Western Europe. The average Croatian monthly wage is 684 euro, while in Luxembourg, it stands at 3,151 euro.