April the 9th, 2022 - The Croatian company Galeb, based in the Central Dalmatian town of Omis well known for its textiles throughout the country and beyond, is set to make military under garments for the next four years.

As Poslovni Dnevnik/Marija Brnic writes, the Omis-based textile company Galeb will equip the Croatian Armed Forces with underwear for the next four years. At the tender of the Ministry of Defense of the Republic of Croatia which was opened at the end of last year, this Croatian enterprise was the only one to submit a binding offer for the job, and the Ministry of Defense announced that it successfully met all of the conditions.

A framework agreement with an estimated value of 33.5 million kuna will be concluded with the Croatian company Galeb, while this year, the delivery will be realised in the amount of 8 million kuna. According to the tender documentation, the largest approximate quantities needed by the Ministry of Defense for this year are in the part of military T-shirts and shorts in olive green, of which 34,000 pieces were ordered, while significantly smaller quantities of blue and khaki/camel underwear were requested, as well as functional underwear and military pyjamas.

The Ministry of Defense reserves the right to control the level of quality in certain stages of the production of these items, and delivery is planned, depending on the type of product, within a maximum of 120 days from the conclusion of the contract.

For many years now, more precisely since way back in 1996, the Croatian company Galeb has been supplying its products to the Ministry of Defense, and has been gaining more and more success in the international market of special clothing products, thanks to the excellent cooperation it has with the Ministry of Defense. By meeting the high quality standards and obtaining the AQAP certificate, the Ministry of Defense opened the door to the citizens of Omis to participate in public procurement tenders for NATO members. It is the only textile company that has managed to meet NATO's high competition standards twice since Croatian independence was declared following the Homeland War.

In addition to the army, the Croatian company Galeb supplies its products to the Croatian police (MUP), the Civil Protection Directorate, as well as to the Customs Administration of the Ministry of Finance. As for the quantity and further orders in the years to come, they will, as has been determined by the Ministry of Defense, depend on the needs, as well as the amount of funds provided in the military budget.

For more, check out Made in Croatia.

December 21, 2021 - The Rijeka Civic Museum has sent a public invitation to its citizens, but also to Italian, German, Austrian, British, and other citizens to join the last phase of preparation of the museum display dedicated to the legendary Galeb ship, which in other countries is also known under other names.

The Invitation has been published on the website of the Rijeka Civic Museum, on the website of the City of Rijeka, and on the website of the Tourist Board of the City of Rijeka and concerns all those who own and wish to share items, photos, videos or simply vivid memories of the ship Ramb III, Kiebitz and Galeb with the wide audience. These are the three names under which this ship sailed during its long and rich history. The Rijeka Civic Museum collects physical memories by borrowing or permanently using them, and also intangible ones, available in the testimonies of people linked with the ship in various ways. Various items will be taken into consideration, and also human stories that can relate to any period of the ship's life.

All interested parties can respond to the Public Invitation via the online form available on the website https://www.rijeka.hr/en/online-application-form-for-the-public-invitation-of-the-museum-of-the-city-of-rijeka/ or via email This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it., or by calling the phone number: +385 51 351 092

The restoration of the ship Galeb is financed with European funds as an integral part of the project "Tourist Valorisation of Notable Industrial Heritage Monuments of Rijeka".

The ship is currently being restored at the Dalmont shipyard in Kraljevica, a small town on the north Adriatic coast. Most of the ship's furniture has been restored and the furniture awaits its return to the original premises where it once stood. At the same time, the Rijeka Civic Museum, in cooperation with Nikolina Jelavić Mitrović, a multiple award-winning Croatian designer is preparing a permanent museum display that will show the rich and incredibly interesting European and world history of this ship.

Three names and three roles of one ship

The ship Galeb is best known to the general public as the maritime residence of former Yugoslav President Josip Broz Tito, who travelled aboard the ship around the world making visits to member countries of the Non-Aligned Movement. However, this ship has a history that goes beyond it. It was built in Italy as a transport ship, then became a warship and afterward a German minelayer. The ship was badly damaged twice but was saved both times. Galeb was Tito's ship, and after the breakup of Yugoslavia, the ship was sold to a Greek ship-owner who wanted to turn it into a yacht but was unable to do so due to financial difficulties. This ship has found its last refuge in Rijeka, where it will become the first Croatian museum - ship. We remind you that in 2020 Rijeka was the European Capital of Culture.

Under the name of Ramb III, this ship was built and launched in 1938 at the Ansaldo shipyard in Genoa. The role of the ship was then intended for transport. The ship was to transport southern fruit to Europe and for this purpose, the construction of the ship was commissioned by the Italian company Regia Azienda Monopoli Banana (RAMB). It was the third of a total of four ships of this company.

Immediately after the launch, at the beginning of the Second World War, Ramb III was transformed into an auxiliary cruiser of the Italian Navy and carried food for Italian soldiers in Africa. During one of those voyages, in 1941 in the Libyan port of Benghazi, the ship was torpedoed on the bow by the British submarine Triumph and nearly sunk. Thanks to the ability and skills of the Italian captain and crew, the ship was nevertheless saved in such a way that from Benghazi to Sicily it travelled 900 sea miles in reverse after which it was towed for restoration works to the San Rocco shipyard, near Trieste.

After the capitulation of Italy in 1943, the ship was captured by the German Navy and turned into a minelayer by mounting minelayer rails. The Germans renamed it: Kiebitz. As a minelayer, the ship laid more than 5,000 mines in the northern Adriatic. In November 1944, in the bombing of the port of Rijeka, it was sunk by Allied planes. It spent three years on the bottom of the port, at the end of the war, in 1947, it was recovered from the seabed by the company Brodospas from Split.

The ship was then towed to the Uljanik shipyard in Pula, where it was dismantled and reassembled and completely rebuilt. Under the new name - Galeb - it was used as a training ship of the Yugoslav Navy. But the ship owes most of its fame to the fact that it was the maritime residence of former Yugoslav president Josip Broz Tito during his state travels. It thus became a symbol of the Yugoslav role in the Non-Aligned Movement. During its first trip abroad, Galeb set sail in 1953 for London. That trip was also a sign of Yugoslavia's political turn towards the West after retreating from Stalin and the Soviet Union. After London, and Tito's meeting with Winston Churchill, followed numerous state trips to countries in Asia and Africa with the purpose of promoting the ideas and policies of non-alignment in the world affected by the division into eastern and western blocks.

After Tito's death, and after the breakup of Yugoslavia, in the 1990s, the ship was sold to a Greek ship-owner. He wanted to turn the ship into a yacht, however, due to financial problems, the refurbishment project never came to life. The Ministry of Culture of the Republic of Croatia declared the ship a Croatian cultural good in 2006, following this, the City of Rijeka bought it with the intention of turning it into the first Croatian ship - museum. With the accession of Croatia to the European Union, Galeb has become an integral part of the EU project "Tourist Valorisation of Notable Industrial Heritage Monuments of Rijeka". In 2019 the ship was towed to the shipyard in Kraljevica, a small town on the north Adriatic coast, where its reconstruction is underway.

The fourth life of the ship Galeb will be a museum life. Thus, after a turbulent past, it awaits a peaceful berth in the Rijeka port and visits by numerous tourists. Through the museum display, the ship will tell the story of its rich history, and the Public Invitation sent by the Rijeka Civic Museum enables all interested parties to include part of their memories that link them with this ship in the museum display.

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December the 2nd, 2021 - The Croatian Galeb company has impressed no less than NATO for the second time around. They're now on their very own export offensive of sorts.

As Poslovni Dnevnik/Suzana Varosanec writes, the business of the Omis-based Galeb, since 1951, when several hundred workers worked with the machines of the time boiling and intertwining the first cotton threads, all the way to today's company with more than 340 workers, a common denominator has remained present - success.

The Croatian Galeb company is interesting as it is currently the only vertically integrated manufacturer of knitted products in all of Croatia, it's also a strong, large enterprise and exporter with a prominent position and results in the Croatian textile industry. It also stands out because of its strategic focus on development and innovation.

In addition to all of the above, despite the strengthening of competition for imported products, the Croatian Galeb company has successfully maintained the entire production process and distribution in Croatia, through its own retail and wholesale network in Croatia, Slovenia and Bosnia and Herzegovina.

In addition, they're in a new development phase with the aim of rejuvenating their well known brand, in order to increase the share of customers from the young population while retaining their existing loyal customers. That includes, they say, their so-called ''export offensive''. The business of this important component of the Tekstilpromet Group is managed by director Josip Aracic.

''Our complete production process "from the yarn to the finished products" takes place in Omis - the production of knitwear, chemical finishing, design, tailoring, sewing and packaging, and with more than 340 employees, today we're the only vertically integrated manufacturer of knitted products in Croatia, which continuously invests in the latest technological breakthroughs. This occurs in all phases of textile production, as well as in the expertise and knowledge of our employees, whose craft and skill we're proud of,'' said Aracic, adding that all of Galeb's products have been tested with a very precise method and they have the Oeko-Tex 100 certificate to their name, too.

This is confirmed once a year through testing at a German licensed institute. Thus, for their 100 percent ''healthy'' products, in the year in which they celebrate their 70th birthday, in the midst of a global pandemic, they have concluded new, extremely significant deals. They are especially looking forward to the new job they just got for NATO.

This is otherwise the Croatian Galeb company's second contract for the delivery of goods to NATO, which is obviously an additional indicator of their quality and competitiveness.

"We believe that getting a new job for NATO is a great reference that will be used in Galeb's business. It's a demanding procedure with a number of specifics, among other things because it isn't known for whom exactly the items are being procured and that a very large number of bidders were invited to compete with their bids, so we got the job amid strong international competition,'' said Aracic of the deal.

The new job for NATO in the segment is functional underwear, within the framework of a signed three-year contract with the possibility of an extension. This definitely sets the Omis company apart from the rest of the textile industry as it is the only one that has managed to meet NATO's incredibly high tender standards twice during Croatian independence.

With many years of experience and cooperation in equipping the military industry in the Republic of Croatia and abroad under their belts, they have achieved exceptional business references and, according to Aracic, they're very much ready for new challenges and further growth with constant innovation.

For more, check out Made in Croatia.

A seagull tried to make an octopus his dinner, but the octopus wasn't in the mood. This unusual footage from NP Kornati showcases the struggle between bird and would-be prey.

Along Croatia's coast or on its many islands, you're likely to witness battles and very loud ''arguments'' by street cats wanting to get hold of the last fish, or maybe even witness seagulls falling out with each other, what you don't often see however is a showdown between a seagull and his ''almost dinner'', an octopus who simply had no plans to be a meal that day.

As Morski writes on the 18th of April, 2019, after some rather surprising footage from far away in Australia, where a seagull's attempt to make a grumpy octopus a meal turned very sour for the opportunistic sea bird indeed, another almost identical scene has been caught on camera, but this time much closer to home, right here in Croatia, from the beautiful NP Kornati in the Zadar region.

The video was initially taken back in October 2018, and author of the video and witness to this rather bizarre fight, Jure Jerat, says the rather unlucky seagull managed to come out of the fight a little bit better off than the Australian seagull did when he attempted the same ''assault'' on an octopus that just wasn't having it.

While we by no means endorse any type of blood sport here at TCN, this does make for interesting viewing, it certainly isn't something you see on a daily basis and it's difficult to say who we'd put our money on! Have a look for yourself and see who comes out on top in this extremely unusual argument between two very different species at Croatia's beautiful NP Kornati.

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As Morski writes on the 5th of January, 2019, the complete overhaul of Tito's "Galeb" ship is undoubtedly the largest projects thought up by the mayor of Rijeka, Vojko Obersnel, in the past few years. Will his critics stop him? Unlikely, but the cost might.

For years, Rijeka's longtime mayor Vojko Obersnel has been subject to a lot of understandable criticism for his buying and desire to maintain Tito's "Galeb", which has cost more than a million kuna to date, but those protesting Obersnel's to completely repair Galeb would typically shut up when told that the overhaul of Tito's former vessel would be largely financed by European Union funds.

After the official acknowledgment that this is really true came, there were no longer any real obstacles to a tender for the job. Obersnel's critics have mostly remained quiet, even if temporarily, and even some of the furniture from the ship has been renovated.

At the beginning of 2019, more precisely on the 3rd of January, a public tender was concluded for Galeb's renovation, and although they hoped from the City of Rijeka that there might be at least a few bids, only one bid arrived wanting the job of bringing Tito's ship back to life.

The City of Rijeka's administration were likely finding it difficult to come across at least one shipyard ready to take up this truly demanding job, the cost of which is estimated at approximately 27.6 million kuna. As the Fiuman.hr portal exclusively reports from a well-informed source, the only offer came from the Viktor Lenac shipyard, but they have set the cost of the forecast twice as high as initially expected. If their offer is accepted, it will cost about 60 million kuna to breathe new life back into Tito's Galeb.

The City of Rijeka now has two options in this situation. One of them is to secure the remaining 32 million kuna from their own sources, and the only realistic possibility for it is to take out a new loan, which must be approved by the City Council of the City of Rijeka, where Obersnel has, at least officially, no actual majority.

It's no secret that the City of Rijeka has been living on credit for years now, and at this moment, owing primarily to poor management of the city's budget, this amounts to as much as 277 million kuna. To briefly recall, Maribor in Slovenia was also once the proud owner of the title of European Capital of Culture, and for this reason the city almost suffered bankruptcy, and many well-informed individuals are afraid that a similar path is currently being taken by Rijeka, especially if a loan is taken out solely for the purpose of bringing Tito's vessel into the 21st century.

Rijeka's second option is to cancel the tender entirely, and given the huge difference between the forecasts and actual costs of the ship's overhaul, the announcement of a new tender is not reasonable and it is questionable whether or not, should that be the case, Galeb's overhaul would be completed by the end of 2020 as the current deadline is quite stretched.

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Click here for the original article by Zoran Zdelar for Fiuman.hr

December 1, 2018 — A tender to restore the rusting hulk that was Yugoslav strongman Tito’s yacht "Galeb" has been released in hopes the dilapidated ship will be restored just as Rijeka becomes the European Capital of Culture, according to Morski.hr.

The call for bids to restore “Galeb”, Josip Broz Tito’s de facto personal yacht, seeks a shipyard willing to take on the HRK 27.6 million-task of overhauling the yacht ahead of its new life as a museum.

“We hope that Croatian shipbuilders will come forward and that their offers will be pedantic,” said Ivan Šarar, the head of Rijeka’s Department of Culture. The city will be accepting bids until January 3, 2019.

The project comes just as Uljanik, one of Croatia’s larger shipyards near Rijeka, undergoes a painful financial crisis with no clear solution. Ironically, Uljanik already overhauled “Galeb” once in 1952 after Allied forces sunk the ship in Rijeka during WWII.

The 380-foot ship was originally an Italian auxiliary cruiser, then a German minelayer during WWII. The Yugoslav Navy then used it as a school ship. Tito eventually made it his official nautical residence and floating embassy, using the ship for over 100 meetings with statesmen.

Tito most notably used Galeb to visit London in 1953, his first time leaving Yugoslavia since he broke away from the communist bloc and began a decades-long habit of playing the East and West against each other.

Galeb’s overhaul is part of a broader plan to spiff up the city in general, including an abandoned sugar factory. The two projects together are partially funded by the European Union, which is covering about HRK 68.8 million or 85 percent of the expenses.

If all goes to plan, the renovation of the exterior will be complete by the end of next year, followed by the rejuvenation of the insides. Ideally, Galeb will open its doors as a museum, as well as a public and catering space, by the middle of 2020.

The Museum of Rijeka has already begun collected restored copies of Galeb’s furniture, specifically from the salon and apartments, which belonged to Josip Broz Tito and his wife Jovanka. Next year, furniture from the large salon, dining room and guest cabins will be refurbished.

The Museum this year took over the ship’s inventory, including furniture, electronics and documentation.

Galeb has undergone several restorations since it was first created in 1938. This overhaul aims to return the ship to its Tito-era form, providing a historic link to Tito’s regime and the Yugoslav era.

Don’t let the rust and decrepit state of the ship fool you; Galeb has enjoyed a second life as a photo-du-jour among those who favor shooting decrepitude. It has also been featured in the British/American television series Strike Back.

For more on Galeb, click here.