October the 16th, 2021 - The Croatian Modepack company's products are being purchased and used by some of the world's giants, including the likes of Amazon, Adidas and DHL.

As Poslovni Dnevnik/Darko Bicak writes, the growth of e-commerce over recent years hasn't particularly surprised anyone, but there are almost no analysts or companies operating in this sector who could have predicted the sheer volume of growth in this segment of trade due to the global COVID-19 pandemic and the speed of change in the entire sales and delivery chain, which completely altered in just a few months.

This was the general conclusion at the world's largest e-commerce show and its accompanying logistics, Deliver 2021, which was held last week in the Dutch city of Amsterdam.

Customer expectations have grown

The coronavirus crisis which has turned the world on its head over the last year and a half has completely flipped global society and the economy upside down as well. While it has brought to problems to the doors of some from which could take years to recover from, to others it has brought double-digit growth and changes and modernisation that would otherwise require several years to occur. The e-commerce sector and related logistics services are just one of those sectors that has grown by more than 100 percent on the wings of the problems caused by the coronavirus pandemic.

How we can deal with such unexpected and rapid growth, adapt to new social and economic circumstances, and especially meet the changed and increased expectations of customers in terms of quality and security of delivery, prices and especially deadlines, was the central theme of Deliver.

The fair had been takin place in a digital edition from October the 4th to the 15th, and culminated in its classic form late last week in Amsterdam. Amazon, Alibaba, Microsoft, Nike, Unilever, Samsung, Ikea, DPD, GLS, DHL, Overseas and the largest European post offices were just some of about 1,000 companies that found themselves involved with Deliver.

Along with many other great giants of this sector, the small Croatian Modepack company, which in recent years has grown into one of the global players in the production of delivery and safety packaging, was also present. The Croatian Modepack company's products are purchased by customers in 32 countries around the world.

Jure Siric, the director and owner of Modepack, which exports 92 percent of its sales, pointed out that this is their first appearance at the Deliver fair, and their impressions and expectations are optimistic. "Over recent years, we've achieved great growth, especially in terms of exports, and last year we recognizsd the need to be present at events like this.

Unfortunately, last year, COVID-19 stopped all activities and this fair was also postponed, so now we definitely wanted to perform. The registration fee is quite high for Croatian wallets, but if you want to be in the company of the big names, then you have to invest,'' Siric stated while in Amsterdam.

He added that although he has the impression that the fair will bring them a lot in terms of new contracts and revenue growth, it's difficult to quantify for now. "According to the programme, we had about 20 official and pre-arranged B2B meetings, kind of like dates, where we were limited to 25 minutes per conversation. Significantly, we asked for a meeting with half of the companies, and half of them then chose us.

The conversations were interesting, some of them detailed, but of course in such places contracts aren't signed, only information is collected. We expect that in the coming period, after the evaluation of data in specific companies, there will be concrete offers and talks about contracts,'' explained Siric, whose team in Amsterdam included the Croatian Modepack company's head of marketing and web sales, Nemanja Suka.

The duo from Modepack pointed out that there were no big surprises for them in terms of the focus of experts and entrepreneurs at Deliver's event, nor were there any shocks in terms of the topics of conversation with potential partners because the trends and challenges are similar for all participants working within the e-commerce and delivery chain.

The COVID-19 pandemic, and the closures and lockdowns that followed in many countries, including the one last spring in Croatia, had a major impact on changing consumer habits, and thus on the entire supply chain.

In addition to the enormous growth in the volume of e-commerce, a lot of emphasis has been placed on security, ie the fear of being infected by the virus and the sheer speed of its spread, meaning that many customers had been looking for delivery on the same day. Although this model existed in some form even before the pandemic, Last Mile Delivery, ie the fast delivery of smaller quantities of goods and at a shorter distance within a time frame measured in just hours, became an entire e-commerce sector with its own rules and principles.

As Mick Jone, Zancargo’s strategic supply chain consultant, pointed out in Amsterdam, after more than a year of growth that was accelerated by COVID-19, e-commerce itself is evolving rapidly.

“At a time when consumer expectations, habits and priorities have changed, there's a stronger argument for supply chain redesign than ever before. Because of all this, it is very important to make a decision on how to adapt the incoming logistics to service users in this new, hypercompetitive retail environment,'' explained Jone.

Jennifer Nelen, a partner at the Dutch subsidiary of consulting firm PwC, stressed that our new world, now more than ever, requires collaboration within the retail, e-commerce and logistics industries to successfully respond to market shifts and disruption caused by the coronavirus pandemic.

Statistics say that in Europe alone, the number of customers in the e-commerce channel increased by an incredible 15 million last year, and the growth trend at a rate between 15 and 20 percent is expected to continue in the coming period. In concrete figures, this means that last year the e-commerce segment generated 8.3 billion euros more than the year before.

It is expected that by 2025, this segment should generate growth of 15.7 billion euros more than last year. It is still a significant problem that most customers, especially those over the age of 55, even if they have the basic IT skills to do e-commerce, still insist on “feeling and seeing'' the product before buying it. The coronavirus pandemic has partially reduced this trend, but it's still present.

The British giant Tesco presented its experiences with large European retail chains at Deliver, and its representatives pointed out that the opening of physical stores has greatly reduced their demand in the e-commerce channel because the same customers have adapted to the situation in accordance with the United Kingdom's epidemiological regulations.

In addition to the above-mentioned customer requirements and the focus of the entire e-commerce system, there is an increasingly strong focus on ecology. This specifically means that recycled, or recyclable, packaging has become something that every retailer must offer today.

The Croatian Modepack company itself, which has Amazon, H&M, Vans, Adidas, DHL, DPD, Loomis, numerous European financial institutions as well as the diamond exchange in Antwerp (Antwerpen World Diamond Center) and a number of others in its customer portfolio, is also very much on the wings of e-volume growth. Its stores recorded a steady increase in revenue, which amounted to 50 million kuna last year, which is a growth of 60 percent compared to the year before when they grew by 30 percent.

For this year, they expect an additional growth of 20 percent and revenue of about 60 million kuna. Therefore, they decided to invest 50 million kuna in their new plant in Velika Gorica near Zagreb, which should be completed in the middle of next year, and which will allow them to double their capacity, which currently stands at around 200 million pieces of various packaging.

With the new plant and the expansion of the range, they expect that in 2025, their revenue should reach 150 million kuna, with a tendency for further growth.

"Global e-commerce is growing unstoppably, and even before the pandemic, back in 2019, global growth was 21 percent. Data for last year shows that countries with more developed e-commerce systems achieved significant, but still lower growth, while others, like Croatia, measured growth in the hundreds of percent.

The statistics we have show that e-commerce at the EU level increased by 31 percent last year, and if we look at some of the most important countries then we see that in Germany it is 22 percent, in the United Kingdom 31 percent, and in Spain 75 percent. Estimates for Croatia are over 200 percent,'' stated Jure Siric.

For more, check out our business section.

October the 16th, 2021 - Gabrijela Korica is a promoter of the application of machine learning technologies in healthcare at Microsoft Croatia, and she recently launched a luxury furniture brand for pets called Gambarossa. But that isn't call, this new Croatian pet furniture brand comes with a heart in the form of donations to those animals most in need.

As Poslovni Dnevnik/Lucija Spiljak writes, last year, Gabrijela and her sister Petra launched the first children’s book on artificial intelligence in English, and Gambarossa is the latest venture of this enterprising woman from the world of IT.

When, she says, she couldn't find the ideal sort of bed for her eleven-year-old pug Diva's birthday, she spontaneously began the process of sketching and designing a bed for her beloved dog, and then an idea for Croatian pet furniture hit her.

“Through these sketches, it ended up being the case that her bed would need to be a more complex, larger bed, and through brand research, I concluded that I could try to offer something new, enjoy the process, and help others out.

I thought about the project for quite a while, I showed the sketch and the idea to someone who had faith in me and decided to turn my vision into reality. I'm just an idea designer, and he took care of everything, opened a company and turned the idea into reality,'' Gabrijela Korica explained.

This Croatian pet furniture brand also has, as noted above, a humanitarian note - for each piece of furniture they donate 1,000 kuna to various Croatian animal protection associations, working to provide funding for animals, from accommodation and food to veterinary and other medical costs.

Although the market for luxury dog ​​furniture in Croatia is slightly smaller, Gabrijela says that owners around the world want to set aside a certain amount for their pets.

The name of the Gambarossa brand is a modification of her mother's surname, hence the inspiration. She procures materials for the production in Turkey, where this Croatian pet furniture is produced, but says that she would like to move the procurement of materials and the production of furniture to Croatia in the long run.

She wants to further expand her offer, start with employment, but also attract as many people as possible who would support her Gambarossa brand in order to, among other things, help animals as well.

"There's great interest from our customers, mostly from other countries, but we're certainly happy that they have given us their vote as new Croatian brand and thus support the Croatian economy," concluded Gabrijela Korica.

For more, make sure to check out our dedicated Made in Croatia section.

October the 13th, 2021 - Tasks from the Zagreb kids Escape Room are set to be solved across the pond in the world's strongest economy, the United States of America.

As Poslovni Dnevnik/Sergej Novosel Vuckovic writes, entering the United States of America, the world's strongest economy, is an unfulfilled dream for many Croatian citizens, let alone entrepreneurs and business owners, which will in some ways be much easier to achieve when the needs for visas is revoked on December the 1st, 2021.

Kruna Josimovic is from Zagreb, she's an author and the initiator of the Zagreb kids Escape Room, a playroom at the Zagreb Fair (Velesajam) for children aged 8 to 12. She's looking forward to heading across the pond, because she has managed to export her concept, the only one of its kind in Croatia and all of Europe. Her escape room will find a home in Chicago and Philadelphia.

Variations on the topic of solving tasks in space and time are part of the entertainment and tourism repertoire in many cities, including Zagreb, and this has been the case for years, but it's all mostly been for adults.

The peculiarity of this lies in the name - for children, from those who have just started school to the "preteen" generation, which is an increasingly lucrative category of consumers whose appetites, especially in America, are challenging to satisfy. Josimovic started this business, which will open franchises through the Bright Entertainment Group.

The first already exists in Podgorica, Montenegro.

"I accidentally discovered escape rooms in Zagreb, I did them all all and the concept delighted me. That sort of thing only appeared in this country five or six years ago and the target audience was adults, so the tasks, the elements, the "time limits" and the fact that you were left to work things out for yourself weren't adequate for younger children,'' says the entrepreneur, who has a wealth of experience with children to boast of. She therefore wanted to "translate" the model of decipherment through play, with an educational note, into the language of children, then came the proverbial birth of the Zagreb kids Escape Room.

"Researching the market, I saw that there's something similar in Slovenia, but they gave up with the idea, so everything was up to me. We started with 80 square metres of space in Maksimirska, in the first year, I created three new themed rooms and due to great interest I moved to the current larger space we have now,'' explained Josimovic.

Each room includes 10-15 tasks to be completed by a group of up to 9-10 children, which takes an hour, and the work is based on three things - the gamemasters (leaders) are with the children, they help guide them in solving the tasks, there are no limits and there is nothing intimidating in the rooms.

The current setup proves it - The Land of Sweets (on the theme of fairy tales, more specifically The Nutcracker), Aliens (exploring the planets and escaping from aliens) and Professor B. (a detective on the hunt for a miracle drink). A treasure hunt for 20 children will be introduced soon.

Unlike museums, theatres, exhibitions and the like where children have to be quiet, calm and not touch anything, here they have full freedom, everything is available to them and they can and must touch and open, view, explore, and use their brains,'' the creator of the first Zagreb kids Escape Room explained.

Such a description also attracted Americans, more specifically the Bright Entertainment Group, which is present here in the Republic of Croatia with the Museum of Illusions, also an original Zagreb product that has expanded globally through franchises.

“As franchise expansion partners, they were thrilled with the content, they got in touch with Lol Entertainment, which operates predominantly in Chicago and Philadelphia, and presented the concept to them. Negotiations lasted for three years, they were slowed down by the pandemic, and no matter how much explanations were provided by emails and Zoom, they had to physically see what it looked like and we finally met just now, back in September,'' Kruna explained, recalling the beginnings with the Americans.

They confirmed to her that they didn't have anything of the sort, and that in examining the market for children aged 8-12, they concluded that it would "fit" them. In her project, she says, they recognised originality, innovation, play and education. Money was, of course, also a very important factor in it all.

"The whole story is also profitable, the ratio of what's invested and what is returned is excellent. I can’t yet say how much they're willing to invest. We called the franchise project the Cluville Kids Escape Room and the plan is to have at least one of them in Chicago by the spring, maybe two, and then two more in Philadelphia,'' points out Josimovic.

Oman, Riyadh, Dubai, and Tel Aviv were all to follow, all on reconnaissance in Zagreb, but the coronavirus pandemic delayed the expansion of this Croatian product into the Middle East, so, what does Kruna actually expect from America?

"My expectations aren't small, it's a great success to be able to sell something at all, let alone to someone who invented the entertainment and edutainment industry, but it's very difficult to make something original and experience success like that here in Croatia," she said.

For more, check out Made in Croatia.

October the 9th, 2021 - A new Croatian crypto startup called Blockademia aims to solve the problem of fake certificates and diplomas, which is both morbidly ironic and innovative given that there are so many circulating in this country.

As Poslovni Dnevnik/Lucija Spiljak writes, one of the 46 cities around the world where the global Cardano summit was recently held was Zagreb, where the new Croatian crypto startup Blockademia was presented.

Blockademia's eponymous application (app) uses Cardano technology and provides a decentralised system for document authentication. As they explained, Blockademia ensures permanent, unchangeable and secure storage of proof of authenticity of any issued document and enables the simple and fast verification of the authenticity of all kinds of documents, diplomas, certificates and others.

They have been preparing their project for the last year, and now, according to director Marin Kramaric, the time has come to involve the public.

"Over more recent years, we've witnessed the growing abuse of fake diplomas at various levels in society, in our country and in the rest of the world. So, I think Blockademia is coming out at the perfect time and the interest will be great. We already have excellent feedback and interest exists, as this Blockchain component guarantees complete transparency and security where it's impossible to make a change once the data is entered. Blockademia's system solves the challenge of transparency and authenticity at all levels, and is applied not only for the authenticity of diplomas and certificates, but also for other documents such as contracts, video and audio recordings, source codes...

Everything we get in binary form can be recorded and written down in a blockchain, and later provide users with quick and easy access from anywhere in the world at any time. We chose Cardano as the first blockchain developed with an academic approach, and today it's positioned as one of the top three blockchains offering the highest level of decentralisation, security, sufficient speed and relatively low transaction costs,'' explained Kramaric.

After Revut, Blockademia is the second Croatian startup to sell tokens using Cardano blockchain technology. Their clients consist of institutions, laboratories, various companies and state and city administration bodies which issue documents that need to be protected from forgery.

"We're starting, of course, first locally, but we're soon planning for global expansion through a network of franchises. Our plans by the end of this year are to successfully complete the Private & Community Sale, and further hire and strengthen the team that will complete the project next year, and further contract the franchise model to have a franchise network in the world and customers from all areas over the next eighteen months. We have four models of the Blockademia system, which means everyone can find themselves in it. In the first two quarters of next year, we plan to complete the Blockademia application and test it with the first users. In the third quarter, we plan to complete the web and mobile application for verification and, we'd say in the last quarter of next year, we plan to be in full production of the system,'' said Kramaric.

The ACI token is a native token on the Cardano blockchain and will be used as a utility token by which all actions within the Blockademia application will take place. At the beginning of October, the first round of private sales of ACI tokens began, which will be followed by the first round of public sales on November the 15th, the second round on November the 22nd and the last round of community sales on November the 29th, which will then last until December the 6th this year.

''I must mention that this is primarily a community offer, and ACI tokens can only be obtained by replacing the ADA (native Cardano currency) with ACI. After completing all rounds of the token sale, we'll start with the development and integration of the platform itself. Big plans also require big investments. We're raising the funds so that we can realise all this in a year, the majority of which goes to franchise development around the world, as well as support and marketing. We have very good interest as well as the first potential users to test the system, and franchisors. There are always investors for good projects,'' noted Kramaric, whose team consists of 18 employees of various profiles; the base consists of IT and blockchain experts, in addition to marketing, finance, legal department, human resources and other departments.

After the token sale, when more intensive development and global implementation of the system start, further employment is expected, and Kramaric believes that blockchain technology is well accepted here in Croatia, who says that Blockademia's overall goal is to shape the world with truth

“Blockchain is actually an IT network, spread over thousands of mutually independent computers around the world, that is protected by strong encryption and other technologies. Once recorded, the data on the blockchain is permanent, publicly available and unchangeable, because no person or organisation has the ability to delete/change this data,'' he stated.

For more, make sure to check out Made in Croatia.

October the 8th, 2021 - The five-year-old Croatian startup Memgraph has received a handsome amount in the form of an investment from no less than Microsoft's M12 fund, as well as from other very well known and highly respected funds.

As Poslovni Dnevnik writes, the promising Croatian startup Memgraph recently announced that they received a seed investment of an enormous 9.34 million US dollars, in which Microsoft's investment fund M12, Heavybit Industries, In-Q-Tel, Counterview Capital, ID4 Ventures and Mundi Ventures all readily participated.

The company's executive director, Dominik Tomicevic and technical director Marko Budiselic founded Memgraph just five years ago, and the idea was born out of the idea to provide significant analytical capabilities aided by graph databases. Since then, this Croatian startup has well and truly blossomed into something which is both recognisable and admired.

They then introduced the new Memgraph 2.0, a platform that allows developers, engineers, professionals and large companies and enthusiasts to programme their applications based on data flows and graphs in mere minutes. The Memgraph Community Edition (MCE) is available with a BSL (Business Source License) which means code openness in most situations, from personal to commercial.

They say from Memgraph that the money from this fantastic investment will be used for new development activities, the expansion of the development team and the community of developers and enthusiasts.

Although they employ people throughout Europe and have engineers in both Greece and the Netherlands, Memgraph's main hub will still remain in the Republic of Croatia.

''The goal of this round of funding is to expand and further strengthen our team. Given the fact that our higher priority is the development of Cloud products, we'll primarily employ Frontend (Angular) and Backend (NodeJS) engineers,'' explained Marko Srsan, Memgraph's chief operating officer.

For more on Croatian companies, startups, doing business and investments in Croatia, make sure to bookmark our dedicated Made in Croatia and business sections.

October the 4th, 2021 - The Croatian startup scene is still blossoming despite the dire economic situation caused by the pandemic, and the Croatian startup Meddox has something to boast about, having attracting a massive 4000 users in just a couple of months.

As Novac/Jutarnji/Bernard Ivezic writes, the Croatian startup Meddox has attracted more than 4,000 users in a mere two months. The first mobile application (app) for storing medical records and one of the first Croatian healthcare startups quietly released its product on the Google Play Store at the end of the summer this year.

Off to a fantastic start, this startup is still growing, although something similar already exists in Croatia. The health portal, as part of the state IT system CEZIH, brings together medical documentation from examinations and tests performed in hospitals and other state healthcare institutions in one place.

Vesna Babic, the co-founder of the Croatian startup Meddox, says that they decided on a different approach and, instead of the healthcare system, they put the patients themselves at the centre of the story.

''Even in CEZIH, part of the documentation isn't available to all doctors that people visit, and documentation from private healthcare institutions can't be included in that system at all. The meaning of Meddox is that each of us has our medical documentation in one place and always with us, easily accessible on our mobile phones,'' says Babic.

She went on to explain that this important documentation is entered into the application in two ways. The first is by taking a photo, and the second is done by opening the document in the Meddox application, after which it processes it and makes it searchable.

''In this way, it becomes possible to store covid certificates, so many use our applications for that as well, and all the documentation is available at any time because it's stored in the cloud,'' Babic pointed out, adding that behind all this there is a broader meaning. According to a July McKinsey study, greater healthcare and more careful medication, or the more accurate monitoring of therapy, could reduce global health spending by up to 40 percent over a 20-year period. But this can only be done by people who are ''health literate''.

''With the Croatian startup Meddox, we want to enable people to take control of their health data and to improve their understanding of health information, and thus take better care of their own health,'' noted Babic.

As an example of that, Meddox's application offers a comparison of laboratory results of its users. As such, through easily understandable graphs, it shows an overview of the results in order to notice reduced or increased values ​​in time. Babic, who has worked in the world of pharmacies for almost two decades, says the application recognises more than 1,000 laboratory parametres. She emphasised that the idea for the app was initially conceived by business partner Maja Bogovic, who is the founder and director of the job search portal Danasradim.hr (TodayIWork) and a former manager with extensive experience in managing procurement at both Ipercoop and Konzum.

''Healthcare differs from country to country, but the needs of the patient are the same everywhere,'' Bogovic rightly noted.

Development took place during lockdown

She explained that she got the idea to develop the Croatian startup Meddox two years ago. After the Global Innovation Summit, at which the health and aging of the population was set as one of the most important segments of development in the next period, she began to think about which product everyone would need. It started to be realised last year when the lockdowns started due to the pandemic.

Vesna Babic explained that they developed the idea and then included experts, and even during in the summer, they had their first functional specification of the application and the framework design. Then they looked for investors.

''We presented the idea to family and friends and two of them invested in our startup. Then we founded companies and ordered the development of the application from the software company Blue Factory from Virovitica. In general, about a year passed from the idea to the placement of the application on the Google Play Store,'' concluded Babic.

For more, check out Made in Croatia.

October the 4th, 2021 - Waldpass, which is based in Zagreb, has come up with what can be applied as a global solution to a very common road traffic issue - vehicles getting into accidents because of animals present on the roads.

As Poslovni Dnevnik/Lucija Spiljak writes, vehicle collisions with game and other wild animals are among the burning problems for all roads around the world, including right here in Croatia. On the roads, along with small animals, larger animals, such as roe deer, wild boar, foxes, and in rare cases even wolves and bears suffer on the roads. The victims are not only animals, but also drivers and other road users.

Various solutions have been being worked on across the world for years to stop or at least reduce such awful situations, and Croatia has thought up its own solution, unique in the world, which has already been approved by hunters - Waldpass, the first device to deter wild animals from the roads using an infrared spectrum.

“We want to make the population aware of this problem, to bring the Waldpass community together and promote the protection of animals and human lives on the roads. The cumulative effect is important, we want to encourage change. The larger the community we create, the safer the roads will be and the animals will stay where they should be, in the forest. We first developed and tested the product, and then founded the company,'' explained Ana Trepsic, the business manager of Zagreb's Waldpass.

A Croatian solution to a global problem

The number of people injured or even killed in these accidents is alarming. At the same time, damage to vehicles reaches tens of thousands of kuna. According to statistics, 30,000 people have been injured in the last 15 years and 300 deaths are caused each year across Europe when vehicles collide with animals on the road. Last year, 684 traffic accidents were officially recorded in Croatia due to vehicle collisions with animals. In these accidents, 39 people were injured, 10 of them seriously. In previous years, there were even more vehicle accidents caused by wildlife, and people were killed in some of them.

As Trepsic and Marko Borosak, the director of Waldpass, explained, this device is placed on the vehicle's registration plate, and the infrared light on it drives animals away from the oncoming car, which prevents the vehicle from crashing into the animal. Infrared light has a wavelength outside the human visible spectrum so it cannot be observed and as such is not dangerous to other people on the road. As the visible spectrum of deer is very different, these animals perceive infrared light as a threat and associate the light with a real danger in the movement of the vehicle, and therefore avoid it at all costs.

The transmitter of the Waldpass device is mounted on the license plate holder, and then fixed in a suitable place on the front or rear of the vehicle. There is also a double installation for better performance on both license plates. The integrated GPS speedometer ensures for the optimal switching on and operation of the device, and the waterproof and robust design can withstand all weather and road conditions.

They're presenting their device to the public for the first time today, on October the 4th, when the International Day for the Protection of Animals is also being celebrated. In addition, autumn is the optimal period for the installation of Waldpass' creation because animals such as deer are the most active due to the mating season, most often at dawn and dusk when their behaviour, especially that of stags and bucks, can be truly unpredictable.

Waldpass has, so to speak, arrived at the right time when there is more and more talk about the problem of wildlife on the roads, especially wild boar, animals which people are increasingly seeing in the lower mountains and even in their own backyards where they can become aggressive and dangerous to domestic animals and pets. During the coronavirus pandemic, their numbers increased even more.

Borosak explained that the story with Waldpass started by accident, during the research of the influence of air and lasers on the behaviour of animals.

“We studied the work of foreign experts, and we based our device more on visual detection, examining the frequencies and the exact effect of our technology on wildlife. Our device throws light left and right, and the designed angle is 30 degrees - as the vehicle moves, it emits light on both sides of the section. This protects the community.

When we saw significant results, we decided to move forward with it. More specifically, we've been engaged in this for the past 2.5 years, and we used the coronavirus pandemic to investigate and develop the entire project even more intensively, devising a proper strategy. This innovation has been submitted for patent protection, we're waiting for an opinion and we'll continue in the direction of adopting it as a patent. We'd be glad if this product had a global impact. We even have test devices ready. It will be necessary to monitor local game for a period of 3-6 months, set up some night cameras, cover the entire area, equip a fleet of vehicles, look at the seasonal impact… We're intensively looking for where we can place these test devices. We hope to start cooperation with the Faculty of Agriculture, within which there is a department for hunting, and we also plan to turn to hunting societies, HGSS and similar organisations,'' explained Waldpass' Borosak.

Fifteen patents in fifteen years...

Waldpass is otherwise a company whose founder and director is Marko Borosak, who is also an innovator and the founder of A-Elektronik. Borosak has been dealing with automotive electronics for fifteen years, in which he has as many as fifteen patents in the field of laser and radar technology.

For more, make sure to check out Made in Croatia.

September the 20th, 2021 - Back during the very warm final days of August this year, oil with CBD (cannabidiol) and CBG (cannabigerol) intended for the treatment of animals was presented. Meet an interesting Croatian dermocosmetic product - VetHealth.

As Poslovni Dnevnik/Marta Duic writes, the producers are the Istrian veterinarian Igor Bencic and the company Canna Trade from Porec, led by Karlo Kovacic. This oil is a registered Croatian dermocosmetic product, is vegan, laboratory tested, free of gluten and other allergens, and it's even free of THC (psychoactive substance from hemp).

"Given that we've been following research in the field of cannabis and cannabinoids for years now, and we cooperate with companies that engage in that research, it wasn't difficult to determine the direction in which we wanted to go in,'' said project manager Andrea Gudac.

While all are concentrated on the so-called ''full spectrum oil'' whose products contain a hemp extract which then dissolves in the base of another oil (such as that from olives), they opted for what's known as broad spectrum.

“VetHealth is broad spectrum where the exact amount of certain cannabinoids is put into the base to make the composition of the product as reliable as possible. While full spectrum contains up to 0.2 percent THC, vroad spectrum lacks it, meaning that it's actually THC free. VetHealth is currently the only broad spectrum in Croatia, with 8, 16 and 24 percent cannabidiol and cannabigerol.

Igor Bencic participated in the formulation of the product, and he has also participated in the VetHealth project from the very beginning and understood the benefits of cannabinoids properly. Thus, he is the first veterinarian in all of Croatia to introduce broad spectrum into complete therapy in animals,'' explained Gudac.

VetHealth as a product in the distribution part was taken over by Phoenix Pharmacy, one of the largest veterinary wholesalers, and in cooperation with them, they're also educating veterinarians on how best to determine therapies.

Oil n More is a cosmetic part of the story of the manufacturer Canna Trade, more precisely oil with CBD intended for the beauty world. After several well-known brands introduced creams, lotions, toothpastes with hemp, they realised that something that really contains CBD is missing.

“If we need something for an animal's claws, and we need to prevent a problem, then we'll put something out onto the market which does actually help, and not just nurture. In addition to nourishing the claws, it's great for massaging the paws and is effective in combating fungus. Our oil contains exclusively organic and raw materials, and it is produced according to the GMP standard, which means that it is completely safe for human use as well,'' explained Gudac.

They are present here on the Croatian market, and are in negotiations to expand further to Europe - Switzerland, Austria, the Czech Republic and Poland. Both products are made in Croatia, and the raw material is procured exclusively organic and certified by an authorised distributor.

"So far, we aren't able to buy raw materials in Croatia, but we hope that the new regulations will soon allow us to do something like that. The VetHealth project already required a large investment, and the process itself took a year and a half. Oil n More is a newer project and has just seen the light of day, but that doesn’t mean we don’t have big plans for it. That's followed by additional facial care products after eyebrow and eyelash treatment, followed by a nourishing cream.

Work on the new line is an investment that will run through 2021 and 2022, and in addition to product placement, we want to focus on education, and this includes lectures, but also congresses for the veterinary profession,'' stated Andrea Gudac.

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September the 16th, 2021 - The Croatian company Altpro is engaged in the development and production of signalling and other safety equipment for trains and their accompanying infrastructure. Thanks to the recent signing of contracts between them and Koncar, their equipment is set to be placed on Croatian-made trains.

As Poslovni Dnevnik/Darko Bicak writes, Altpro has its headquarters in the City of Zagreb, and as they explained, both contracts they signed with Koncar regard the delivery of their equipment for the automatic train protection system which Koncar develops.

Both contracts relate to the supply of Altpro’s built-in vehicle safety systems (ATP) equipment. The first contract defines the delivery of 21 sets of installed equipment for 21 electric Croatian-made trains which Koncar has built for Croatian Railways (Hrvatske zeljeznice).

Each set of built-in equipment includes a central unit of the RAS8385 IS type, as well as all vehicle peripherals. The second contract defines the delivery of one set of installed equipment for the vehicle for track maintenance, which Koncar also builds.

''This set of built-in equipment includes the central unit of the newly developed ATP device type RAS90, as well as all vehicle peripherals. The new RAS90 is fully developed by Altpro and operates on the I60 principle as well as the PZB90 principle, which is based and developed on the experience gained through long-term use. The RAS90 complies with the latest European (EU) technical and safety requirements,'' they explained from the company headed by Zvonimir Viduka.

They added that the end customers in both cases are Croatian-made trains and Croatian railway companies that have recognised the quality, reliability and other advantages of Altpro's products in the field of railway safety. From this technology company, they emphasised that these two contracts will ensure the stability of Altpro's business in the future and strengthen their company's presence and references across the wider market.

Altpro, which currently employs 180 people, signed a 40m-euro contract with the railways in India late last year, and Viduka commented that the company has been trying to break into the Indian market for as long as fifteen years, and that it is worth around 2.5 billion euros in their industry.

He revealed the recipe for export success, saying that a Croatian product must be innovative and rare in order to be successfully exported. ''The detectors we've developed for monorail trains are unique in the world, they aren't produced by anyone else. So, you need to specialise in something closely and become the best at whatever that something is. This is our philosophy, to be the best in the world in the three niches we deal with,'' Viduka explained, adding that the coronavirus pandemic has brought them some huge problems, especially given the situation in India.

“Our engineers go over there to assemble the products, so they have to go into self-isolation when they return home. That's why we've digitised everything we can and adapted what we can to the maximum. However, at the end of last year, we managed to return to the results we enjoyed back in 2019, which a record year, and by the end of the year we exceeded it, which is an exceptional achievement,'' said the leader of Altpro, Zvonimir Viduka.

He also pointed out that Croatian Government economic and job preservation measures helped to overcome the most difficult period caused by the pandemic and lockdowns.

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September the 15th, 2021 - The new Croatian Staff.hr ''worker booking'' platform has been created by footballers, and it's the first such booking site to exist in Croatia.

As Poslovni Dnevnik/Marija Crnjak writes, meet the brand new Croatian Staff.hr service for workers and employers launched at the beginning of the summer by a pair of amateur football players, economist Toni Adzic and psychologist Ivan Abramovic.

Their goal is to speed up and simplify the processes on the labour market as much as possible, and Adzic got the idea in London, where he lived before the coronavirus pandemic struck.

“It was there where I came across this system of ''booking'' workers through a platform on which labour is hired across various industries as needed, and it works very simply and quickly. As we also have a serious problem of finding labour in Croatia, and so far there's been no such service, we decided to develop our own platform. We started working at the time of the pandemic and it was challenging, but we managed to get the Croatian staff.hr platform up and running this June,'' Toni Adzic explained.

Although they are also registered as a platform for job advertisements, unlike other employment agencies and portals, a database of clients as well as workers who are interested in the job is created, and clients then go there to "hire" them. The system is similar to how delivery services work, except that it is not the products that are delivered but the workforce, and it primarily regards operatives.

"Everyone who wants to work applies to us, passes certain security checks with us, leaves their data on their previous experiences, and stays in our database of workers, then they go off to work wherever they want, depending on the needs of clients. We aren't their employers, they're a partner of the company and the workers can choose for themselves, and we take a certain fixed fee for advertising from the clients and that's how we earn. Everything is very transparent and pre-arranged, so that both employers and workers know what awaits them,'' said Adzic.

He pointed out that it is very important for them as intermediaries on the Croatian Staff.hr team that both clients and workers are satisfied, and that unpleasant experiences can occur on the labour market, so they have introduced a system of reviews, the evaluation of both workers and clients.

Since June, when the Croatian Staff.hr platform started, their base of workers has been constantly increasing. The interest is currently greatest among students, but there are other age groups in a variety of industries, from catering to events, promotion and sales. As the platform was launched only in June, this year there was no opportunity to significantly penetrate the labour market in terms of tourism, which is certainly expected in 2022.

There will certainly be work to be done, as the shortage of workers in tourism will be one of the sector’s biggest challenges for next season. This year, the sector has entered the season with at least 5,000 workers less than needed and ads for maids and waiters are still circulating today.

It is precisely the acceleration and simplification of the employment process not only of foreigners, but also of the domestic workforce that is what the Croatian Tourism Association is most loudly calling for. In addition, in their proposals for measures that will soon be sent to the Government for consideration, HUT is asking for tax relief for the employment of students, a large pool of potential workforce in the summer season, which is currently not well motivated due to tax levies.

That would be a small expense for the state compared to the income that can be generated if that group is motivated to work, they stated from HUT.

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