March the 15th, 2022 - The brand new Croatian Post Kukuljanovo logistics centre, about which there has been an enormous amount of talk, is now finally open and has provided welcome employment to more than 300 people.

As Poslovni Dnevnik/Darko Bicak writes, the new Croatian Post Kukuljanovo logistics centre which will work to serve the wider Kvarner and Istria region, worth almost 60 million kuna, was opened last week in the Kukuljanovo Industrial Zone in the Bakar area.

On an area spanning a massive ​​4200 square metres are areas for sorting, the transport and delivery of shipments, a distribution centre and workshops, and a post office, and the new location employs more than 300 people. A modern business centre for Kvarner and Istria will improve the quality of delivery in the area as a whole.

Its construction completed Croatian Post's largest investment cycle, and Istria and Primorje-Gorski Kotar County received one of the four most modern points in the network of sorting facilities in all of the Republic of Croatia, which includes facilities in Zadar and Osijek and a new sorting centre in Velika Gorica close to Zagreb.

The Minister of Maritime Affairs, Transport and Infrastructure, Oleg Butkovic said that he was glad that the company, which is 100 percent state-owned, has been a positive example of business for years and that Croatian Post is on an equal footing with some of the world's largest competitors.

"Thoughtful investments in digitalisation and infrastructure show that the direction of development of Croatian Post is very clearly defined and is the result of a strategic direction towards the future. It's clear to us that both the present and the future of logistics are packages. The trend of strengthening e-commerce was particularly pronounced in the years of the coronavirus pandemic, when online orders grew into the double digits,'' he said.

Global changes, he pointed out, didn't come as a shock or unpleasant surprise for the company and that numerous investments in infrastructure and digitalisation have turned it into a successful modern company that has a great impact on the domestic economy and encourages the development and growth of overall logistics in this country.

For more, check out our business section.

February the 13th, 2022 - The yet-to-be-opened Kukuljanovo logistics centre near the City of Rijeka on the Northern Adriatic is the result of yet more investments made by Croatian post (Hrvatska posta), of which there have been several lately.

As Poslovni Dnevnik/Darko Bicak writes, after spending the cash of an an investment cycle totalling almost one billion kuna over the last five years, most of which went to building new and modernising existing logistics capacities, Croatian Post (HP) is about to open the new Kukuljanovo logistics centre (LC) in the Kukuljanovo industrial zone near Rijeka. The facility is worth 60 million kuna, and it should be in operation in around one month.

Prerequisites for further growth

Croatian post explained that in the previous period, their logistics space in the City of Osijek was expanded, a new logistics centre was built in Zadar, capacities in Bjelovar were expanded and a new sorting centre was built in Velika Gorica near Zagreb, which, totalling a massive 350 million kuna, is the largest investment in Croatian post's history.

According to them, the Kukuljanovo logistics centre with its 5,000 square meters of business space is the final point of investment in infrastructure, which created the preconditions for further logistical growth and development of the company.

“The new Kukuljanovo logistics centre is an important link when it comes to raising the quality and speed of providing our services to all residents who gravitate to this area - Gorski kotar, Istria, Kvarner... Infrastructural investments in the network of sorting plants will have a favourable effect on the overall development of the logistics market across Croatia.

All of the locations of modern sorting plants are strategically selected and are placed in locations that are well connected in terms of traffic and are in line with logistics trends. In the past, such facilities were located in the centres of large cities, and today they're placed on the outskirts along important traffic routes.

The number of locations where the operational part of the shipment business, such as sorting and processing, is performed, while not reducing the number of post offices available, is in more than 800 settlements with a network of 1,016 post offices,'' they said from Croatian post, headed by Ivan Culo.

"With this investment in the Kukuljanovo logistics centre, we're completing this cycle of investments in logistics and logistics infrastructure in accordance with the development strategy. Employees, green energy and digital development are the direction we're heading in. Investing in logistics and sorting capacities, the digitalisation of processes and the ‘last mile’ in the form of a network of parcel machines has brought us to a completely equal position of the leading EU postal operators. We're no longer a trend-following post office, but an equal partner. Global e-commerce retailers recognised us before the emergence of the coronavirus pandemic, and we've justified their trust in us over the last two years,'' Culo added.

In order to be in the trend of the EU Green Agenda, the Kukuljanovo logistics centre will have a solar power plant installed on its roof.

An explosion of logistical needs

The growth of e-commerce and especially Croatia's accession to the European Union (EU) has led to an explosion of logistical needs in this country. The entire logistics sector had to find a solution in a relatively short time and radically change its established ways of meeting the needs of both private and business users.

The situation was further accentuated by the global coronavirus pandemic, and for many people, online shopping and the delivery of goods to their doors has become a substitute for going out shopping in the classic way, ie going to the store. Solutions for the "new normal" do of course exist, but they aren't cheap or fast.

The fact that the transformation of Croatian post, through investments in new technology and infrastructure, has been recognised, is confirmed by the fact that some of the largest Internet retailers, such as Amazon, AboutYou and many others have chosen them for their services in Croatia and the wider region. It's worth noting that Croatian post processes Amazon shipments even for Greece and Cyprus.

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