A touch of Africa in the heart of Zagreb, more precisely on Ilica 73 in central Zagreb, as Okoli Kikelomo from Nigeria officially opens her new (well, sort of) African restaurant ''MamaVeek's Kitchen''. ''We don't have a pricelist, people who don't have any money can come and eat for free,'' stated the warm-hearted Okoli.

As 24sata/Anamarija Milos writes on the 6th of April, 2019, the African bistro ''MamaVeek's Kitchen'' which moved from Ilica 69 to Ilica 73, was initially opened six years ago by Okoli Kikelomo who came to Croatia from Nigeria in search of a better life than what she felt Nigeria could offer her.

The opening of her new-yet-old restaurant officially began at 16:00 and Okoli said that there is no price list in her restaurant, people are free to leave donations, and those who don't have any money are more than welcome to come and eat for free, she also added that she would continue to serve only traditional African recipes in her kitchen.

Okoli arrived here in Croatia six years ago in search of a better life, and since then, she hasn't stopped - she founded a humanitarian association, organises various art workshops, she volunteers, but in spite of all her many activities, this ''jack of all trades'' is mostly devoted to cooking African food at ''MamaVeek's Kitchen''.

Okoli is a talented cook, and she learned it all from her grandmother, and she made her very own first dish eight years ago. Her passion for African cuisine is so strong that her desire is to transfer it to her visitors through her hard work in her African restaurant. The food served there is mostly bought at the Zagreb's Dolac market, but the exotic spices with which she enrich her traditional African dishes are sent to her from her mother who is back in Nigeria.

Despite her love of African cuisine, Okoli has taken on the task of learning to prepare and cook Croatian cuisine.

"In these past six years, I've learned how to prepare sarma and tripe in Croatia. I know how to make fish paprikaš too, but for my guests, especially for the opening, I'll prepare an African soup with meat and a special fish dish,'' Okoli noted.

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Click here for the original article by Anamarija Milos for 24sata

Zagreb draws people from across the country and the wider region to march in the name of transgender rights.

The Republic of Croatia is known as a conservative country, and while there are people of all backgrounds, ethnicities and religious beliefs (or none whatsoever) living in Croatia, the dominant religion is Catholicism. Most people in Croatia identify as Catholic if asked, even if they don't actively practice the religion or attend church regularly, or at all.

Gay pride has become somewhat of a staple in some of Croatia's larger cities, including the capital of Zagreb, Split, and in the typically much less conservative Rijeka along the northern Adriatic coast. While gay pride parades generally pass by without many incidents, Croatia still has a long way to go before such parades are as accepted as they are in other European capitals such as London or Berlin.

What of those who are transgender, you might ask? As france24 writes on the 30th of March, 2019, Croatia hosted its very first transgender march yesterday, which attracted approximately 300 people from Croatia and the wider region to Zagreb to march in an attempt to draw attention to the discrimination they feel they face in what is a largely, but not entirely, conservative part of Europe.

Those marching were accompanied by special police as they marched through the streets of the capital on the warm, sunny spring day this weekend, blowing whistles and brandishing signs and banners attesting to their struggle within society. 

The organisers of the Zagreb march spoke about the concerning rise of ''right-wing groups'', even going as far as to refer to such groups as ''fascists'' who seek to focus their ''attacks on marginalised people'' which they claim include women, migrants and transgender individuals. They claimed that the march encompassed not only trans rights but desired to draw attention to ''all forms of oppression,'' according to a statement from the organisers.

Since its accession to the European Union back in 2013, Croatia has seen the gradual liberalisation of gay rights, and homosexual couples have been perfectly free to register themselves as life partners, just like unmarried heterosexual couples, since the year 2014. That law afforded them the same rights which were already enjoyed by homosexual couples who are legally married, which include matters involving property, tax, health and social insurance, and various other things.

In spite of Croatia's numerous steps forward, which have picked up their pace quite significantly since the country's accession to the political-economic bloc, issues still remain for people seen as as marginalised, which includes both gay and transgender people.

A trans activist from the Slovenian capital of Ljubljana stated that solidarity is key, and that the march was an emotional one as it saw all of the people from across the region, which like to fight with each other at the best of times, coming together in Zagreb in the name of such an important matter.

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Click here for the original article by france24

As Poslovni Dnevnik writes on the 23rd of March, 2019, Business Matchmaker, organised by the eSTUDENT student association and the Office for consulting and career development at Zagreb's Faculty of Economics, will be held on the 26th of March this year at Zagreb's Faculty of Economics (Trg JF Kennedy 6), beginning at 9:00. The completion of the official part is expected to be at 15:00.

This innovative project allows students to personally present themselves in a short four minute selection interview to a group of desired companies. Interviews will be held in the halls of the faculty, and the continuation of the meeting and greeting, to which all participants are invited, will be in "Kefi" after 15:00 that same day.

Business Matchmaker is an event which resembles the speed dating principle and is intended for EFZG students to represent themselves to their potential employers. After the interview, employers and students will evaluate each other and the best students can then expect another round of interviews, where they will be able to learn more and find out more about employment opportunities in their desired companies.

In this interesting and useful way, students on the lookout for an employment position are able to properly develop their self-presentation skills and get to know how the labour market works firsthand. This year's Business Matchmaker will see the participation of as many as 21 companies divided into five different groups.

Lucija Matašin shared her personal experience of last year's Business Matchmaker and what it did for her career-wise:

"By participating in Business Matchmaker, I got a student job, which is honestly everything but ''student'' style. Along with that [I got] a great reference for my CV and a lot of motivation and courage to make it easier to deal with stress in similar situations in the future. I met the people from the company, which I might once meet again, because the world is really small and who knows where I'll be tomorrow, and maybe I'll bump into some of these people again on my way. This eSTUDENT initiative and the Office for consulting and career development really provide EFZG students with something they don't get through their classes.''

The companies participating in the project are 24sata, Addiko Bank, Atlantic Grupa (Group), ATOS, British American Tobacco, Croatia Osiguranje (Insurance), Deloitte, DIV Group, EC, INA, Kaufland, King ICT, KPMG, L'Oreal Adria, mStart, Philip Morris Zagreb, Samsung, SofaScore, Syskit, Talentarium and Zagrebačka banka.

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The InvestCro conference was opened by the editor-in-chief of Poslovni Dnevnik, Vladimir Nišević, who stressed the fact that this project opens up discussions topics that are of great importance to our society.

As Poslovni Dnevnik writes on the 18th of March, 2019, the "InvestCro: Investment in (Non) Opportunities in Croatia" conference, whose central theme is rather depressingly inspired by missed opportunities, ie planned investments that have not been realised, as well as obstacles investors encounter and also possible improvements to the arrival and treatment of foreign investors, is being held at the Westin hotel in Zagreb.

This conference is the second in a series of four conferences as part of the all-year-round multimedia project headed by Croatian news and media outlets Večernji list, Poslovni Dnevnik and 24sata entitled "InvestCro: Kako do ulagača" which discusses how investors can be attracted.

The President of the Republic of Croatia, Kolinda Grabar-Kitarović, stated that the current results of foreign investments don't match the desired image. She said that lessons should be learned from the mistakes alreayd made to avoid repetition.

President Kolinda Grabar-Kitarović said that Croatia was missing out on so-called Greenfield investments and has proposed five specific guidelines to the Croatian Government in order to attempt to tackle that problem.

"The results of direct foreign investment don't match the desired image. In 26 years, 33.5 billion euros has been invested in Croatia, but the problem is that the investments were mostly Brownfield [investments] and focused on ''nontradeable'' sectors. We're missing out on Greenfield investments, investment in the production of goods and services that will create quality jobs and be more export-oriented,'' said the president at the InvestCro conference in Zagreb.

She feels that the direction of development can be directed in the desirable direction if the appropriate lessons learned from the mistakes made are properly taken into consideration. "First of all, I'm thinking of investment woes, the shortage of people involved in attracting investors, the lack of approach planning and coordination," she said.

On their way directly from Pantovčak to the Croatian Government are five key guidelines for the faster and easier growth of investments in Croatia. It is necessary to consolidate the competences of all those responsible for attracting FDI (foreign direct investment) at a single national level, to create an investment attracting strategy aligned with other economic strategies, to focus on new models and soft investment incentives for added value and to constantly create an attractive investment climate.

The five recommendations include the continuation of work on a better overall image of the Republic of Croatia and the promotion of the country as a destination for investment, not just a tourist destination. In this regard, Grabar-Kitarović announced that the working group who deal with branding Croatia will come out with guidelines within a month.

"We decided to do something for our society, as well as for those who will still be here when we're gone. Without healthy investments, we will remain without investors, and for this reason we have just decided to speak [on the subject] through various conferences, just like this one today.

''I hope this conference will contribute to the progress of Croatia,'' Niševic said.

'' the last two years, two-thirds of greenfield investments in the EU took place in just six European countries. I believe that Croatia will raise its rating in 2019 and come over to the side of these six countries, with the help of new laws and a better quality framework for stimulating investment,'' said Minister of Economy Darko Horvat at the InvestCro conference.

"The share of investment in GDP is growing, we're at the average of EU countries. The third quarter in 2018 was, according to current information, optimistic, as there was a 4.9 percent rise. Croatia needs economic growth of five percent. Step by step, we're strengthening competition, there is no instant solution, and changes need to be deeply rooted.

We should help entrepreneurs to retain as much of their own funds as possible for the new investment cycle. We're digitising business and the state, in order to reduce the burden on entrepreneurs. Therefore, I expect growth in production, especially in the private sector. Through the Investment Incentive Act alone we attracted 16 billion kuna, with 12,750 new jobs being planned. We know exactly what kind of educational profile we need, we need to make sure we've got young people who will be employed there. We need a synergistic effect with cities and counties," the minister said, hinting at the need to all be on the same level.

"We want investments with new technologies and added value. Despite the global boom in the digital economy, less than 20 percent of such investments fell into the ICT sector. We are not only looking at the volume, but also the character and type of investment, as well as the quality of jobs which is what our young people who are leaving are looking for abroad. We need a bit of courage and some enthusiasm in order to turn these issues into a chance.

The Ministry of Economy has announced five new tenders, which is an innovation opportunity for domestic entrepreneurs. I'm sure that 303 million euros will be invested in Croatia's investment potential and that this year will end with development,'' concluded Horvat, adding the encouraging fact that this week, the representatives of several Swiss companies are browsing northwestern Croatia and looking for business zones that are ready for them to move part of their business to.

Mladen Fogec, president of the Association of Foreign Investors in Croatia, noted that Croatian pessimism could affect foreign investors very much.

"The rating agencies are constantly positioning us at the end of the second-third on the doing business scale, but they all get their perceptions from talking to our political parties, non-governmental organisations, and we're very inclined to being negative - we have to turn to optimism. When it comes to the perception of corruption... we're not in the best position, but when you ask a person whether or not they bribed someone, the answer is always that they didn't. Please spread optimism because Croatia has a lot of potential. In principle, there's an enormous problem with our mentality, the capacity for change isn't big enough, we're still not ready to start to change, and we're living in the era of digitisation and computerisation,'' Fogec said.

"We've spent far too much time wrestling with the past, we spent an actual minister of economy on Agrokor, and her successor is now spending most of his time trying to deal with Uljanik, which is also grappling with the past. We need to deal with the future. It's good that we have introduced a law on strategic planning. It's not a question of whether foreign investors want to come to Croatia, but whether or not we actually want foreign investors,'' claims Fogec.

He noted that the association he leads didn't issue the so-called ''white book'' for business for 2019 because the problems still remain exactly the same as they were before. "Nothing has changed, or it has changed at a slower rate compared to changes in neighbouring countries, so our latest edition is still valid," he concluded rather sarcastically.

For those of you who understand Croatian, here's a video of what has been said, suggested and discussed at the conference:

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Far from the calm yet rugged shores of Dalmatia in the Croatian capital of Zagreb, Dalmatian students are set to showcase Dalmatia's rich history with traditional klapa singing at the seventh student klapa festival.

As Gordana Igrec/Morski writes on the 16th of March, 2019, Klapa music can be heard up and down the Dalmatian coast and is an intrisic part of Dalmatian culture. From Dubrovnik and the extreme south of Dalmatia up to northern Dalmatia, many different groups exist from area to area and from city to city.

The word klapa means ''group of friends'' and this type of a cappella singing, which focuses mainly on romance and love, as well as on the sea and various parts of Dalmatia, traces its long roots back to littoral church singing.

The seventh festival of student klapa organised by the Split students' association will be held on March the 23rd, 2019, at the Student Center in Zagreb (Studentski centar, Savska 25), starting at 20:30.

For the seventh year in a row, the festival offers students the opportunity to be part of a traditional and cultural event which works to present the richness of Dalmatian musical heritage to the public and to continental Croatia. All those interested in this type of music are invited to come and showcase their talents and present Zagreb with one of the most influential and recognisable symbols of Dalmatia - klapa singing. There's still time to register.

When one walks the usually busy streets of the very central European City of Zagreb, the sights and sounds of Dalmatia appear a world away. Owing to this festival, the capital will become a hub for the sounds of the city's resident Dalmatian youth, as it has been in previous years.

In this way, Dalmatian students are able to freely continue to cultivate their klapa singing traditions and their culture away from their coastal homes, and further  enrich the continental Croatian City of Zagreb, where they have come to study and work, and where many will remain permanently.

Make sure to follow our dedicated lifestyle page for much more. If it's just Zagreb you're interested in, give Total Zagreb a follow.

Click here for the original article by Gordana Igrec for Morski

One successful Zagreb company has been exploring outside of the Croatian market and has found a plethora of opportunities and interest on foreign markets.

As Lucija Spiljak/Poslovni Dnevnik writes on the 14th of March, 2019, thanks to its long tradition, identity, high quality, attractive design and practical accessories, the Zagreb-based company Mediaform has been positioning in Croatia for over twenty whole years as a market leader in the field of the production of top of the range diaries made from some of the highest quality materials.

The company was founded back in 1997 by Nedeljko Šukurma, who is currently working with numerous other companies and designers. They have been selling their company's products for years through retail stores such as Narodne novine, Školske knjige (School books), and others. However, Šukurma didn't want to just stop and stay on the Croatian market alone, but he, with a dose of success and an excellent idea, decided to dip his toes into foreign markets.

"Over the past few years, we've been trying to break into the European market in the segment of office and school materials with notebooks called Keyboard in two groups. The first group are premium notebooks - such as Moleskine, Lanybook and the like, while the other group are school notebooks. The Keyboard notebooks were successfully sold in the bookstores of the former Algoritam company, but even after its closure, customers were still asking after Mediaform's notebooks,'' explained Šukurma.

This was just another incentive for Šukurma and his Zagreb company to try out their products overseas where his company came across very positive reactions and a lot of praise.

"To be able to position yourself successfully on the global market in a segment that has long been covered by world-renowned brands, you need to do something innovative, something interesting and specific. With our new collection of Keyboard notebooks, we have been able to attract a great level of interest from foreign distributors and bookstores. On the front page, the notebooks are simple and minimalistic, but the design is impressive. The letters on the embossed, styled keyboard on the notebook's covers form an inspirational message - Handwriting beats a keyboard, which promotes handwriting as one of the timeless ways through which people can express their personalities,'' stated the founder of this successful Zagreb-based company which is clearly going from strength to strength.

Therefore, in addition to the business side of things, this Zagreb company's notebooks also feature an aesthetic function that will attract anyone who is used to using laptops and the like. For two consecutive years, Zagreb's Mediaform has been expanding its product group at the world-renowned and specialised Paperworld fair in Frankfurt, Germany. At the end of last year, they first exhibited their products at the Insights-X fair in Nuremberg for the German market and at the Big Buyer fair in Bologna for the Italian market.

"At the last Paperworld fair in Frankfurt, the organisers officially drew attention to our Keyboard notebooks. At this fair, there's also a separate space that acts as an exhibition gallery called Trends. When it comes to [exhibiting there] the fair organiser selects the most innovative and creative articles that should have particular emphasis drawn to them, with the focus being placed on excellence. Our Keyboard notebook found itself among this group of the world's top manufacturers,'' said Mediaform's owner.

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Click here for the original article by Lucija Spiljak for Poslovni Dnevnik

Excellent news for one Zagreb company as its success leads to the opening up of yet another office abroad, this time across the Atlantic in no less than the Big Apple - New York, USA.

As Poslovni Dnevnik writes on the 21st of February, 2019, the key person and the manager of the Zagreb company's brand new American office is Mick de Meijer, a former executive director of several marketing agencies and a person with very strong experience in two key areas - project management and business development.

Zagreb's Q IT software company, which is one of the fastest growing IT companies in Europe according to Deloitte, has been operating at a new location since the beginning of this year. Their sixth global office was opened in New York, the digital hub of the eastern coast of the United States. The office is located in the very centre of New York, more precisely in Manhattan, and in addition to this location, this Croatian company still continues to operate from Zurich, Oslo, Belfast, Los Angeles, and of course from Zagreb, where the company's headquarters are located.

In his twelve years of hard work in the field, Mick de Meijer has successfully consulted more than 100 companies and worked directly with a variety of enormous and highly respected brands such as Victoria's Secret, Trojan, and Heinz.

So far, this Zagreb company has successfully helped a number of American companies with their technology development, of which, companies such as the United States Postal Services, Facebook, Walmart and Coca-Cola should definitely be mentioned. They have worked in different manners for these gigantic American companies, ranging from genialising their employment process to dealing with the system that employees use in their daily work.

Make sure to stay up to date with our dedicated business and Made in Croatia pages for much more on Croatian companies, products and services, as well as information on doing business and the overall investment climate in Croatia. If it's just the capital you're interested in, give Total Zagreb a follow.

The top three questions I get asked to this day by Uber drivers and colleagues alike are, ''What do you think of Zagreb?'', ''Why did you come here?', and ''What do you do here?''

In a brazen attempt to address the final question, I thought long and hard about what I could expose, what crazy stories I could tell, without telling too much. A few ideas came to mind that perfectly encapsulate my last year here, shedding light on what a foreign teen with no connections can experience when you give yourself up to chance.

From meeting strangers in the night to accidentally taking the wrong train to Budapest, I make up for the lost time spent in my room in England by playing into Zagreb’s strengths - drinking, socialising and working. It got to the point where I asked my friend “What I should I do tonight, I have nowhere to go!” and she responded crassly “How about going to that place that, you know, you PAY FOR ON A MONTHLY BASIS?, that little place called your apartment!”.

She gives good advice sometimes. I’ve managed to mould something out of nothing here and with little language skills thanks to those around me. I want to hammer that in, not at all to brag but because having read post after post in expat forums and online about “I want to travel to X place but I’m afraid of not making friends, I’m afraid of being lonely or stuck”, I can’t help but yell “It’s completely possible”.

One night I like to remember in particular, I found myself sitting tipsily in the corner of a karaoke bar with little recollection of the journey there. I was sat with people I had met only twice before (coffee once and that New Year’s night), drinking a decent 15 kuna glass of vodka and coke while periodically stealing sips of the friend next to me’s beer. He noticed eventually and bought me my own.

We were in an edgy and low-key karaoke bar, called Pračka (Croatian for sling or catapult), hidden in the centre of Zagreb. Let me clarify, I had little recollection of the journey there, in part due to my drunken state, but mainly because the bar was located on some street that looked like all other streets around it, at the bottom of a block of flats, indicated only by the entry door - a big, black metal door covered in stickers. I’m not sure how people manage to spot this sober let alone three Tomislav beers in to a night out.

I’ve come to have a few stand out memories of Pračka (Edit: I’m still unable to locate the bar on my own). One night was spent with a tram obsessive, a girl, and a man I’ve come to nickname Berlusconi. It was my first introduction to turbo folk and first lesson in how to awkwardly sing and dance along to a song you don’t know - a very important lesson for all new expats! As a result one of favourite folk songs is Kad Sam Bio Mlad by Riblja Corba.

The second was at an office party. Late into the night, I was waiting at the front of the queue for the bathroom. In an instant one of the doors threw open in a loud clamour. Out of the doors fell a couple, mid doggy style, who slammed their backs against the wall of the bathroom in full view of the entire queue and part of the club. We all burst into laughter and let me tell you, in this whole scene the couple were not phased (only a little surprised at the fall) and did not let it ruin their.. moment.

They promptly glanced at the crowd and closed the doors once again. Slightly taken aback, I accepted it for what it was and carried on with my queue waiting and got back to our group. The next singer was up, and I couldn’t help but laugh when I saw who rushed onto the stage but the same girl going at it in the ladies. A little unprepared she hurried onto the stage fixing her hair and proceeded to absolutely kill the song with the whole crowd singing with her. Girl, I salute your bravery.

What else have I done, well I've been travelling. First to Spain and by the time this is up I'll be bathing in the thermal baths of Budapest. What I love about Zagreb in addition to everything else I ramble about - it's a great location for taking a bus or BlaBla car around Europe for an affordable price.

Gone are the days of scraping together £200 for an all inclusive holiday to somewhere in Spain (Inbetweeners style) drinking as many cocktails as you can at the breakfast buffet to make the most of the all-inclusiveness. A friend of mine will often take a day trip into Italy when she has the time off work, while another friend just last month came back from a 5 day ski trip in Bosnia.

Turning up the notch on the cringe, in true Mira style, trying to answer this question I found myself returning to the question of “Why do I do any of this?”. As a believer in personal privacy online, I find it difficult to write these (not so) monthly posts about my experiences. For the majority, I hope at the very least they are entertaining to read.

For others, I hope they help explain my situation, who I was and what I think about life in Zagreb. But for myself, I must remind myself why I write. I write for the young girl that I was. Hiding in my room, afraid of the world and afraid of giving life a serious chance, but yet desperately yearning for an escape. Typical teenager.

I remember being fourteen trawling through sites about homestays abroad, how to get onto an exchange program, and I was desperate to get out into the world, Japan, Spain anywhere that would offer me excitement. I dreamt of swimming across the channel to France (if David Walliams could do it for charity, then surely I could do it too!). I thought about how I’d pack up my belongings in zip-lock bags so they’d float alongside me as I swam. I dreamt about running away to the eurostar and becoming a lowly waitress in Spain.

Sixteen came and I had been spending my time learning Japanese (you were right mom, it was just a phase). Planning how, when and where to go to become an English teacher there. Eighteen came and universities abroad were the topic of my free time. I write to give hope to the fourteen year old me cooped up in her room dreaming of suicide and life in another world. I write for my friend who, just last year, overcame some of his most fundamental fears and countered his psychological struggles (such as OCD) and travelled around Europe with a group of strangers totally off his own back. Creating memories I can’t help but admire. We were all typical teengers once!

I fantasized until I was finally met with the chance to leave. And so, in a rush against the clock, making the most of these teen years while I can, this last year has been a cacophony of unusual experiences interwoven with shifts at my equally unusual workplace, to create memories I’ll continue to tell.

Soon you'll be able to read more at http://miramaughan.com, so watch this space!

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As Bojana Mrvos Pavic/Novi List writes on the 2nd of February, 2019, Zagreb's VeeMee connects customers and manufacturers over a platform where, by scanning a QR code on a product, the buyer can see all the information about the producer that interests them - who he is, how many hectares he is working on to produce his own food. That is, the customer can see whether or not what they're holding in their hands is truly authentic.

He may only be 31 years old, but he has many more good business ideas that, without exaggeration, could save the world - Marko Kozjak from Zagreb goes through life preventing food wastage and working towards having a "zero waste" future in which there will no longer be wasted food, or at the very least not so much of it.

Each of us, on average, throws away 75 kilograms of food per year into the trash - these are the alarming results of the research recently carried out by dr.sc. Branka Ilakovac. We mostly throw away fruits and vegetables, but also milk and dairy products, according to her research. How much food, however, is being discarded by chain stores, purely because of the smallest mistakes in packaging, the look of the food or other superficial defects, is difficult to imagine for the average consumer.

Tons of food is either returned to producers or taken to be thrown away, for example, if some tomatoes end up being damaged ​​during the delivery process, or if every tenth mango is too small - such cases see the whole consignment become a collateral victim and it is simply thrown away. This is a huge amount of food that is perfectly fine for human consumption.

Kozjak, who established the Zagreb-based VeeMee company with his partner Nikola Vida, is saving food from being needlessly thrown away. The company has saved more than a hundred tonnes of food over the last six months, and even prevented the dispersement of twelve tonnes of CO2, which would otherwise have ended up in our atmosphere.

Kozjak told Novi List at his office at the Technology Park in Zagreb, that when he finished "Tesla", the Central Technical School in Zagreb, he had already developed some projects for which there was unfortunately never any money to realise.

"Then, back in my younger days I took Nietzsche in my hands and fell in love with philosophy, and then completed philosophy and religiology. After graduating from the faculty, because I was always interested in sales and negotiation, I ended up selling fruit and vegetables, I was an assistant to the manager at one, and then a director at another company. I got to know all the holes in the system - from procurement problems, over freight, to logistics, and I decided to start a company that will repair that,'' stated Marko.

He has already succeeded, though many say they initially expected him not to. He has developed a food rescue system, but VeeMee (Vi-Mi), as its name suggests, is doing something very useful indeed - it connects customers and manufacturers over a platform where by scanning the QR code on the product, the buyer can see all the information on the producer - who the producer is, how many hectares they have, and how they produce their own food.

Thus, the customer can check a product's authenticity. Up to 1,100 Croatian OPGs and other producers are connected to the platform at the moment, meaning the sources of their products are guaranteed, and the customer can, if they want to, even visit the OPG and see for themselves where the food they're buying and eating comes from.

The story continues with another important segment of this Zagreb-made business - saving edible and decent food from being carelessly and needlessly thrown away.

''When some products arrive at the factory of a shopping centre from their producers, due to a certain mistake, everything will end up being returned to the manufacturer, or it will be sent to be thrown away - in 70 percent of cases this is because of a packaging error, or because of a LOT print error. Similarly, in 30 percent of cases, it's due to some irregularities on the goods themselves, for example, due to a small part of the goods having been stolen and the like.

This doen't mean that it isn't good food, but that part of a delivery, two to three percent of the goods, has endured some damage, and the whole truck, as well as the damaged goods, will be returned to the manufacturer. It will be thrown away. We're in contact with producers, primarily for imported goods, because in Croatia this system is not yet sufficiently recognised, and we take the goods to our partner's warehouse.

We either repackage it, if it's a packaging problem, we correct any printing mistakes - we mostly do whatever it takes to deliver it in compliance with the law, and send it to the stores within the next 24 hours. If there is a product with more significant damage, and it's clear to us that returning it to a store would take longer than a day, then we sell it to food outlets or to wholesalers,'' explained Marko.

So far, in just six months of active work, Zagreb's VeeMee has saved about 90 percent of such goods, which are "repaired", sent to stores or to food outlets, or to wholesale markets. The third option is to divide the goods if there is no other solution, or there are no buyers for it, and yet someone still wants it.

Make sure to follow our dedicated Made in Croatia page for much more. If it's just Zagreb you're interested in, give Total Zagreb a follow.

Click here for the original article by Bojana Mrvos Pavic for Novi List

Good news for retail therapy lovers and job seekers alike as both Zagreb and the Istrian city of Poreč are due to get new big shopping centres and a wave of new employment opportunities that go with it.

As Korana Sutlic/Barbara Ban/Novac writes on the 2nd of February, 2019, the current plan for Poreč's up and coming brand new outlet is to have it completed entirely by this summer, it will be located at the entrance to the popular Istrian city. It will be the first such shopping centre in the second largest city in Istria to accommodate shops such as BIPA, C & A, CCC, Deichmann, Galileo, Hervis, Müller, New Yorker, Tedi and Svijet Media.

The investor and owner of the project is the company AM PS Delta Nekretnine d.o.o., which has already built a shopping center in Pula - Pula City Mall. Otherwise, the company AM PS Delta Real Estate Ltd., a member of the Croatian subsidiary of MID Bau Real Estate Ltd., is one of the leading developers on the domestic market, and along with the Pula project, they so far have realised the Garden Mall project in Zagreb, TC Koprivnica, STC Osijek, STC Sisak , STC Valpovo, and STC Umag.

''Works began several months ago, and the completion is scheduled for June this year. Poreč will get its well-deserved shopping and entertainment centre, conceptually conceived as a retail park, and every store will have its own entrance. The retail area of ​​the centre will be around 8,379 square metres in size, which will also make it the largest shopping center in Poreč, and in just a few days the final version of its layout will be known,'' they say from Poreč's city administration upon welcoming this large investment.

Along with the new shopping centre, new jobs will of course come as part of the greater package, which is naturally a more than welcome move for the local economy.

Projects in Zagreb

In addition, this June will see a brand new retail park open at the western part of the Arena Center in Zagreb, on a surface of 8,000 square metres, the content of which will mainly be shops which need large spaces. In the Zagreb district of Špansko, a brand new Z centre will be constructed, which will result in an impressive 60,000 square metre shopping centre, along with stand-alone facilities - McDonald's and Lidl.

The new Zagreb retail centre will boast a square, a multiplex cinema, as well as numerous shops, cafes and restaurants. The completion of Zagreb's Z centre's construction is planned for the end of this year. The completion of the reconstruction of Branimir Centre is also expected this spring.

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Click here for the original article by Korana Sutlic and Barbara Ban for Novac.jutarnji.hr