As Novac writes on the 20th of November, 2019, thousands of helmets from the Šestan-Busch company from Međimurje, as well as weapons from the Ozalj-based company HS Product, are equipment purchased by the US Federal Agency from the companies of the Croatian defense industry, while Hrvatski Galeb (Croatian Seagull) produces NATO clothing.

According to the Croatian Chamber of Commerce (HGK), Croatian companies operating in this particular sector are known as trusted and reliable partners who make and offer quality products. They are currently exhibiting at the 21st International Fair of Homeland Security, Military Police Equipment and Arms (Milipol) in the French capital of Paris.

Organised by the Croatian Chamber of Commerce, the Alan Agency, Kap-ko and Šešir, Galeb, Odjeća i Pozamanterija are all on display.

The Prelog-based Šestan-Busch company is present in more than seventy countries today, producing around a thousand pieces of safety helmets daily, and they arrived at the Paris Fair with a top recommendation.

''The German company Busch opened a company with an American partner in California just a few months ago. Specifically, if one wants to become a supplier to the military and police there, they must have a US registered company. This move has allowed us to become a supplier to the FBI, to which we've already delivered several thousand helmets,'' stated Alojzije Šestan, the company's director.

However, Croatian textile companies also play an extremely important role in the Croatian defense industry, too, as technical textiles, as was explained by the Croatian Chamber of Economy, represent a key niche market for the European Union.

''Focusing on "smart clothing" is a major driver of the EU textile industry,'' said Galeb's Stjepan Pezo, who produces a massive two million pieces of clothing each year. Their range includes functional knitwear products, underwear, which doesn't cause discomfort when a person sweats because, as was learned, the clothing sees to it that any moisture is quickly drained away from the body.

"The work being done for NATO is our best reference for potential new partners when participating in trade shows," Pezo added when discussing the business under which Galeb produced as many as 200,000 sets of NATO long underwear.

At the Paris Fair, the Croatian company Odjeća is also present, which produces official and protective clothing such as high-quality military and police uniforms and work and protective clothing for firefighters, according to the Croatian Chamber of Commerce.

''We currently export ten percent of our total turnover to Macedonia and Bosnia and Herzegovina. Because as an industry we can't compete with the Far East in terms of the cost of labour, we place emphasis on quality and our further business plan is to continue working on specific, high quality smaller product series and export growth,'' said Jasminka Korotaj, Odjeća's director.

Croatian defense industry companies are regular suppliers of arms and military equipment for the needs of the Croatian Army here at home too, and this year, the last contract concluded was worth a huge 314 million kuna. In addition, this year's contracts with the Ministry of the Interior (MUP) for police equipment and other items is worth 135 million kuna.

Based on financial indicators, Croatian companies who operate in this sector made a surplus of just under 900 million kuna last year in trade in military goods and non-military weapons.

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In five years, a Croatian company has invested more than 20 million kuna in development, with 20 engineers, chemists and other experts working in Zagreb.

As Poslovni Dnevnik/Bernard Ivezic writes on the 20th of November, 2019, the HG Spot group, the first major Croatian IT retailer to start developing its own technology brands, such as smartphones and 3D printers, has launched a new Wiip product all of its own.

This is the first electronic liquid (e-cigarette) cigarette to be developed and manufactured right here in Croatia. The group entered the e-cigarette market a little less than a decade ago, but has so far been producing in China. Saša Lončar, owner and CEO of the HG Spot group, which also includes a daughter company Vape Technology through which Wiip is marketed, says this is the culmination of five years of development, with 20 million kuna in total invested.

"Wiip is originally a Croatian product. The idea, development and production of our premium liquid e-cigarette are all taking place in Croatia, in Zagreb, and in the startup phase hired, the new product has about fifty people who regularly monitor its development and listen to customer needs," says Lončar .

Twenty engineers, chemists and other professionals worked on the development of this brand new Croatian product. In addition to people and research, the investments went to a manufacturing facility in Zagreb. Wiip is also the biggest step forward from HG Spot.

"We consider our Wiip e-cigarette to be a safe product, since it's a closed system that doesn't allow liquids to be mixed or for you to manually change the composition of the inserts, and what makes it different from the competition is there are no by-products in the vapors, there are of course no cigarette butts and odors,'' says Saša Lončar. He adds that Wiip is the first device of its kind in Southeast Europe to challenge the tobacco industry in a totally new way.

The world's most famous e-cigarette maker, the American startup Juul, received an investment of 650 million US dollars last year, raising its market value to an enormous 15 billion US dollars. Juul was founded in mid-2015, so it is less than five years old and co-owned by Altria Group, the owner of the American Philip Morris.

A month ago, CNBC announced that Altria had written off a third of the value of investing in startups because of increasing scrutiny by regulators and suspected illnesses related to e-cigarette use.

Despite this, Juul's worth still grew last year, and it is now worth as much as 24 billion US dollars. Saša Lončar says his e-cigarette business is growing. For the past five years, he has built an extensive sales network in Croatia, and has also prepared for export, by appearing at the world's largest tobacco trade fair Inter-Tabac in Dortmund.

"The fact that Wiip is already available from more than 2,000 outlets across Croatia at the outset confirms that it has been well received, and negotiations are underway to go regional and EU markets," Lončar concluded.

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Croatian companies face many obstacles when doing business, and the state tends to be the one throwing barriers up left right and centre, often forcing companies to relocate to other EU countries in which the situation for entrepreneurs and doing business is much more favourable.

While running a business in Croatia is far from easy, there are exceptions to the general rule (or at least the general rule which continues to be the most commonly held belief among Croats), that nobody can succeed here unless they're well connected or members of a certain political party. Infobip, a truly impressive Croatian software company which draws its roots not from Zagreb but from Vodnjan in Istria, is just one fine example of what can be done in Croatia, and done well, with patience, dogged determination and a clear view.

As Bernard Ivezic/Poslovni Dnevnik writes on the 17th of November, 2019, in the very centre of Dalmatia, the remarkable Croatian company Infoip has initially employed eighteen experts.

The ever-impressive Infobip, otherwise the largest Croatian software company, has now opened an office in Split, the new Split premises mark the company's fourth office to open in the Republic of Croatia, making it the 66th in the world. Infobip's offices are located across Croatia, and in addition to the newly opened Split office, their offices can be found in Vodnjan, Zagreb and Rijeka. The company has, as stated, initially employed eighteen IT professionals in Split and the new office has become part of Infobip's development hubs. The company otherwise employs more than 2,000 workers in total.

Izabel Jelenić, co-founder and CTO of Infobip, says they want to give talented people in Split the opportunity to work on global innovation.

''After Vodnjan, Rijeka, Zagreb, Sarajevo, Tuzla, Pune (India) and St. Petersburg (Russia), the office in Split has joined the network of hubs in which we develop communication solutions,'' concluded Jelenić.

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The Croatian shipbuilding industry is ailing and in need of urgent help, but not everything is so bleak. While the shipyards in Rijeka and Pula (3 Maj and Uljanik) suffer, one smaller shipyard in Šibenik has produced an impressive vessel. Meet Ida.

As Morski writes on the 16th of November, 2019, "Ida", a working ship for the maintenance of marine organisms, is the first ship with hybrid diesel-electric propulsion built in the historic Dalmatian city of Šibenik, and is also the 100th ship of its kind built for Norway through the Šibenik-based CroNoMar.

The ship was built by workers of the Iskra Shipyard shipyard in Šibenik, which was until recently known as NCP RB Šibenik. It is 13.75 metres long and eight metres wide and is powered by both diesel and electric motors. The ship also has new electrical installations, high capacity batteries, electrical propulsion and cranes, winches and other machines powered solely by electricity, writes the local portal Šibenik News.

It is an innovative vessel designed to reduce emissions and greenhouse gases and was developed for the needs of the Norwegian mariculture sector. Diesel engines, which were the only propulsion of working catamarans, will now be used 75 percent less than previously used to serve fish farms and other marine organisms, that is, only for navigation between shores and farms.

When the boat arrives at the fish farm, the diesel engines are shut off and run only electrically, thus achieving zero emission of gases along the food production zone.

The ship was designed by the Norwegian company Marin Design AS and was built entirely at the Iskra Shipyard in Šibenik. Reducing diesel consumption and reducing greenhouse gas emissions is one of Norway's strategic goals, and for Croatia to begin building hybrid-powered ships is an important technological step that will ensure Croatian shipbuilding is competitive in applying new technologies and building eco-friendly ships.

Watch the video of Ida below:

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As Poslovni Dnevnik/Lucija Spiljak writes on the 12th of November, 2019, ''underground mushrooms aren't going to put food on the table or raise children,'' is a sentence that spouses Radmila and Goran Karlić heard often when they decided to leave their jobs and devote themselves to truffle farming in Paladini near Buzet on the Istrian peninsula, a northern area of Croatia.

Way back in 1994, they initially founded Karlić truffles - The company through which they are now engaged in the purchase and the sale of truffles with their children, and the processing and sales of their products in shops, restaurants and even on foreign markets, as Ivana Karlić, the youngest member of the family, says.

''They said that we were crazy!''

This year, the Karlić family marketed gin with white truffles, the very first in the entire world. Ivan Karlić, Ivana's brother, came up with the idea, who is described as a creator and a big fan of truffles, so he dedicated that to combining them with every dish. The idea originated from a big love of gin and truffles, and was created in collaboration with the Aura distillery, who also work with other traditional types of beverages.

"People like gin, it's becoming more popular so the conclusion was - why not? We worked on it for several months, we made 222 limited bottles, the price of one is about 100 euros. Three months ago, they were put on the market, there are maybe 20 bottles left. People have recognised the value of product and we get a lot of praise and orders from all over the world,'' explains the young truffle enthusiast.

Since that gin turned out to be a great idea, they have already started collecting the finest truffle specimens, which must be perfectly round for gin, in order to produce a limited edition gin next year. The first in the world also offered a unique truffle hunt in which guests can participate, and Radmila Karlić came up with that idea which adds a whole other, more personal element to the entire thing.

''I'm delighted that we have such an innovative offer for our guests, and they're delighted. We have guests from New York who have returned five times for the tour, and their 15-year-old child dreams of working with truffles one day,'' says Ivana.

If guests decide to take part in the adventure, they can also stay at Villa Olive, surrounded by olive trees, for which the Karlić family won the Tourist Flower Award this year in the category of best accommodation for an active holiday.

Through play, Ivana and Ivan slowly learned the business and became much better acquainted with the black and white underground mushrooms.

"The price of truffles wasn't high back then, so we needed to find as many as possible to earn something. Asparagus and other mushrooms were harvested, but our efforts were directed by the truffles,'' Ivana tells us.

Twelve years ago, they planted the first truffle plantation in Croatia with 2,700 oak trees and some hazelnuts, and every day they watered the trees - the cost of which was high because they were made in a laboratory - irrigated and pruned. It was a big and risky experiment.

"After six years of waiting, my brother went for a walk with the dogs and found the first truffle, smaller than a tennis ball. When he brought it home, we were overjoyed because at the time everyone was telling us we were crazy. It was the first truffle found on a plantation in Croatia,'' Ivana explained.

They even get orders all the way from Singapore.

Black truffles grow all year round in the hills, there are more of them and their price is lower. Winter white truffles grow in the lowlands from September to late December or early January, and its price is very high because it is a delicacy that grows in two areas in the world - in Croatia and Italy.

The Karlić family annually remove a large amount from the plantation in Buzet, right next to the forest, which is the original site, they then sell and market them in restaurants across Croatia.

Exports have been particularly successful, selling truffles through distributors across Europe, in countries like Germany, Austria and the United Kingdom, but the orders come from much further away from our continent too, including from Singapore.

Truffella, the world's first truffle chocolate spread in the world which has been being marketed since back in 2016, stands out in with its colourful product offering.

''Mixing mushrooms and chocolate is a demanding and risky business, but it's still our best-selling product. As for this season, it's not been brilliant, but it's not been bad either, there will always be truffles. The Istrian forests are suitable for agriculture, the locals take care of them, they're not polluted and no concreting is allowed; we stick together as a community. That's why we're glad when someone plants a plantation and succeeds,'' concludes Ivana Karlić.

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Croatia is a paradoxical country at times. It boasts an outdated, draconian system that likes to throw obstacles wrapped in red tape in the path of success for entrepreneuers and their ideas, leading many of them to either give up or go elsewhere to operate under a different flag, but yet, so many startups and so much success can be found here in spite of an unfriendly and self-limiting system. Meet Aircash.

This impressive Croatian startup, Aircash, has 40,000 users and is already hot on the heels of the likes of Keks Pay and Revolut.

As Poslovni Dnevnik/Bernard Ivezic writes on the 10th of November, 2019, Aircash is the first Croatian fintech to launch its own mobile wallet. So far, mobile applications (apps) that allow you to replace your physical wallet with your mobile phone and thus pay that way were only offered by actual banks - Erste bank with KEKS Pay, Zagrebačka banka with Telekom Banking and mZaba, then come the likes of Revolut and Monesa.

Aircash is a little bit different from them all, in the sense that it isn't a bank but a new type of financial institution in itself. The Croatian National Bank (CNB/HNB) has now also granted it a full EU license for electronic money.

So far, only three companies have managed to ''get their hands'' on such a license: HT, PBZ Card and Erste Card Club. In addition to the first major regulatory success for a Croatian fintech, Aircash has also gained market success. The Aircash mobile app already has 40,000 users and is the third most popular fintech app in all of Croatia. For the sake of comparison, Keks Pay has 62,000 users and Revolut has 50,000 users, meaning Aircash is definitely on the right path.

Hrvoje Ćosić, the founder and director of Aircash, says they have been building their market position for just over two years now. In mid-2018, they had 15,000 users and a weekly turnover of 250,000 kuna in total.

"We now have 40,000 active users and 48,000 people have downloaded the app, while the traffic we worked with on a weekly basis last year is now our daily traffic and both indicators are growing," Ćosić says.

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Croatian companies and indeed the entrepreneurs which get them off the ground in the first place experience varying levels of success both here at home and abroad. While the Croatian media tends to publish as much negativity as possible, there are many happy stories of success for the little guy in this country, which sadly get left behind in the array of depressing headlines pumped out by most media portals.

We at TCN try to do our best to always recognise the success, however big or small, of Croatian companies, entrepreneurs and products, because this little country boasts far too much talent and innovation to be bogged down in an endless circulation of miserable articles.

The Croatian state may well be no friend (or at best completely clueless) of the domestic entrepreneur and his business ventures, many other more economically developed countries recognise the quality that Croatia continues to produce across many fields.

As Poslovni Dnevnik/Bernard Ivezic writes on the 10th of November, 2019, the Croatian company KING ICT, with its seat registered in Zagreb, has just been chosen for an impressive job with a price tag of 6.4 million kuna attached to it in The Hague (Den Haag) in the Netherlands. 

''We are proud to be able to confirm the professionalism and expertise of our employees,'' stated Sendi Radić when speaking about KING ICT's newly contracted job in the Netherlands. KING ICT has been awarded the job of implementing a high-throughput network and a communications infrastructure solution at the NCIA site in no less than The Hague.

The implementation process will take four months, with a project value of just over 6.4 million kuna in total. Sendi Radić, a member of the board of the Croatian company KING ICT, says this is an extension of cooperation following the successful implementation of a solution for NATO's Communications and Information Agency in the Netherlands.

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As Poslovni Dnevnik/Sergej Novosel Vuckovic writes on the 10th of November, 2019, with over twenty years of professional experience working on the development of advanced electronic systems, as well as a good dose of enthusiasm and ''zeal'' for putting together what they personally care about and love, these two colleagues and friends from Zagreb, Goran Fiolić and Gordan Galić, launched the startup Pixblasters.

This Croatian startup's aim is to create and manufacture an innovative RGB LED controller, an electrical device that would enable both professionals and amateurs, and even those without any experience and knowledge of electronics, to create large video screens using so-called addressable LED strips.

They formulated their desire into a project and launched it on the Crowd Supply web platform, intended for the group financing of (technology) projects. The crowdfunding campaign started about a month ago and has already raised about 6,000 US dollars out of a target of 18,000 dollars in this round that ends in twelve days. Why did they decide to make such a bold move, both in terms of production ideas and in raising capital? Who are the real minds behind Pixblasters?

''We're a ''maker'' duo with experience in significantly more complex projects executed for the global market. Today, when the startup culture and entrepreneurship that are lagging behind here when compared to Western countries are justifiably promoted, we may be a slightly different team that embarked on a project primarily out of fun and curiosity.

After completing the prototype, which surprised us both with its attractiveness and at the urging of our friends and colleagues, we decided to launch a project with the aim of producing a professional electronic controller that would be commercially interesting. We like to do things that interest us. It can be a small electronic dust detector or several hundred pounds a heavy machine with electronically controlled pneumatic and electric motor subsystems,'' explains Galić on his own and Fiolić's behalf.

They knew just what they were talking about when it comes to LED screens and their experiences stretching twenty years, and the story of Pixblasters was born.

"It really is a true anecdote. We were both thinking of building such screens at the time, but it was an undertaking that went beyond the capabilities of most self-builders. A minimum of 3 LEDs are required for one pixel (dot on the screen) of LED screens: red, green and blue. While red and green diodes were relatively inexpensive at the time we're talking about, the blue ones cost about 40 kuna  per piece due to their specific construction.

The purchase price of diodes for a display with a resolution of 120x50 pixels, like the display from our campaign, costed around 300,000 kuna, without the cost of purchasing other electronic parts. We've concluded that as technology advances, such a device today has to cost significantly less and must be accessible to everyone. Indeed, our calculation has shown that LED screens of this resolution could be built today at 100 times less cost,'' explains Gordan.

This pair of Zagreb techno ''makers'' point out that the Pixblasters device is fully prepared and adapted for batch production, which is, after all, their ultimate goal. However, they emphasise that their LED controller is not a finished consumer product, but a device that just allows for the construction of large and attractive LED screens.

“The first series will be produced in Slovenia because of our previous business connections.

When thinking about Croatia, the manufacturing capabilities and capacities of Croatian electronic device manufacturing companies have grown significantly in recent years. I think they are also unduly underrated. Until a few years ago, it would have been relatively difficult to produce a Pixblasters controller complexity device in Croatia, but today it's possible and we plan to work on it,'' Galić reveals.

They are aware that for the needs of the big market, they should also have larger sources of funding, for example, from competitions from ministries or indeed from private sponsors, but for now, Pixblasters is being promoted as a DIY solution.

The advantage of their controllers, they describe, is that they would, with maximum cost-effectiveness, deliver the most important features of LED screens: simple content generation, attractive video display, remote application management and large dimensions.

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Despite the media loving to spread the negatives, there is an enormous amount of positivity in Croatia, and the level of innovation and drive from certain Croatian companies is impressive. One can only imagine what the results would be if the political and economic climate turned in their favour. One such company is a very small one with just eight employees, located in Samobor.

As Poslovni Dnevnik writes on the 2nd of November, 2019, the world is gradually being ''conquered'' by the radars of a small Samobor company which boasts just a handful of employees. They strengthened their position on the global stage by entering no less than the highly prosperous Chinese market. The Samobor-based company's production program is the result of its very own development, and almost all of its production is realised right here in Croatia, HRT reports.

Sensors in hydrology, industrial sensors and radars for security systems used across five continents are all produced in the unassuming continental Croatian town of Samobor, just a short drive from Zagreb.

''We first started selling various electrical appliances and software development services to companies around the world, and then relatively early on in the development of the company, the idea came up to start developing our products and we started with our radar story,'' says Tomislav Grubeša, Geolux's technical director.

That story led them to a hold a thirty percent share of the Chinese market, and a ten percent share of the global market.

''A little luck mixed with a bit of coincidence saw us able to reach some really good partners over in China, who managed to push our products into a large number of water measurement projects, ie, flow measurement across rivers in China,'' said Grubeša.

This Samobor-based company's currently best-selling product is a set of radars for flow measurement in hydrology.

''From this, it's possible to calculate the total flow of water, in cubic metres per second, which is actually needed by hydrologists to be able to plan, for example, flood defenses or plan for the use of energy in hydroelectric power plants,'' said Nikša Orlić, Geolux's director.

Such sensors, in addition to the large Chinese rivers, are also found on the Hendrix Bridge, in Gunja, and more recently on Vrljica. They are also currently working on four new projects, including detection to help detect drones.

"Because every flight drone has to spin propellers that produce a certain sound, they can actually be accurately detected by an acoustic camera," Grubeša explained.

Geolux has recently introduced such new radar platforms for security systems in Northern Europe, more precisely in the United Kingdom, to NATO members as part of a military exercise.

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The EU-level protection of škripavac cheese will doubtlessly put a spring back in the step of the sixteen cheese producers who produce this product in Lika-Senj County. As Marta Duic/Poslovni Dnevnik writes on the 3rd of November, 2019, after lamb and potatoes, Lika could soon gain a third EU-protected product - škripavac cheese.

As revealed by Ivana Starčević, who is the head of the Lika Local Action Group (LAG), the initiative was initially launched four years ago by several associations and is being implemented as part of the Integra Lika 2020 project.

"Because there's a market for this type of high-quality product, protection is a logical step in order to raise production to a higher level, price the product and brand this region as an area offering high quality food. The duration of the EU-level procedure will depend on the time it takes to check documentation and any need for adaptation to European Commission requirements,'' explained Starčević.

As she explained, in addition to the mark for sales growth and better placement, promotion and work on recognition of this local product are crucial. According to information obtained from Agrovelebit, the producer of the first  Lika product to receive protection at the EU level - Lika potatoes - demand has grown precisely due to publicity and that is currently outstripping supply.

At LAG Lika, they believe that their experience so far will help them position the cheese on both the national and EU markets. In the wider area, this particular type of cheese is produced by sixteen registered cheese makers.

"The marketing of products from here has intensified with the establishment of the Lika Coop Cooperative, which markets domestic products to stores and souvenir shops at Plitvice Lakes National Park and to the Lika Quality certified sales points,'' Starčević stated.

OPG Miškulin from Smiljan, otherwise Nikola Tesla's hometown, produces traditional local cheeses as well as numerous other products from the region.

"Protecting škripavac cheese at the EU level for small traditional producers like us means a lot. With all the investment that we have to increase production and placement, this puts an extra spring in our step. We've acquired new cows from Austria, and thanks to more milk, we have also increased our škripavac production. We've completed the construction of a new barn, and we're planning to apply for the Lika Quality label,'' said Marina Miškulin, the owner of the aforementioned Smiljan-based OPG.

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