April the 18th, 2023 - The Zagreb Loonapark company is young, and it is already looking at a very promising future after having doubled its income and with plans for further employment opportunities.

As Poslovni Dnevnik/Josipa Ban writes, there really is nothing missing in the already extremely thick catalog of promotional materials of the Zagreb Loonapark company. From indispensable cups of all types, colours and designs, the most sought-after bottles and thermoses, to lamps, pendants, bags, ecological ballpoint pens, this young company does it all.

In short, there's no promotional material that the Zagreb Loonapark company's team can't design and deliver to their clients. The richness of their offer and the individual approach they take has ensured their great success, because in just two years of being operational, they've managed to profile themselves as one of the leading companies for the production of promotional material in all of the Republic of Croatia.

The management of the company, founders Robert Bozic and Domagoj Vrdoljak, therefore have every reason to be satisfied. In the second year of their operations, the company's revenues doubled to a very impressive 6.6 million kuna, or 876,000 euros. Their number of employees also grew from the initial three to nine.

They offer more than 40,000 items from within their range and they also have a respectable number of clients, among whom are some of the biggest names of the domestic economy, from Atlantic Grupa, Infobip, Microblink and Allianz osiguranje to Infinum. Despite their obvious success, their beginnings were not at all easy because they started Loonapark's business in the middle of the unprecedented coronavirus crisis.

"Clients recognised us, and almost everyone we worked with would recommend us to someone else, so it wasn't really a question of whether we would grow, but by much we'd grow," stated Robert Bozic, the co-founder and CEO of Promo spot, under which the Zagreb Loonapark company's brand operates. Their clients come from various sectors, from trade, tourism, the HoReCa sector to the IT and the processing industry, and they're of all sizes - small, medium and large enterprises.

"The list of companies we work with is large and varied, which is good because we aren't dependent on any one in this way. For example, our five largest clients account for 25 percent of Loonapark's revenue," Bozic explained. A significant investment, in the amount of 40 thousand euros, in their web shop, i.e. online sales, also contributed to the growth of their business. Their web sales have been refreshed, optimised and their search engine has been improved, Bozic pointed out, adding that it's their main sales tool.

"It's precisely through the web shop that we get contacted by companies that we've never heard of and that we think are micro or small, but later it turns out that they are successful and respectable IT companies that just aren't very publicly known. Therefore, high-quality business cooperation often results from the contacts we make through the web shop," said the executive director of the Zagreb Loonapark company.

On top of all of the above, this company's wide array of clients, who are increasingly looking for recycled and degradable materials and custom-made products that are special and different, are won over and retained by their approach.

"In this segment, we've made the biggest step forward because we care that we approach each client individually and that they get everything they need in one place. In addition, through our graphic preparation and design department, we can offer them new and different solutions depending on the campaign they're working on and the message they want to send out," emphasised Bozic. In the end, it was precisely this approach that, in just two years of being operational, placed them among the leading companies involved in the production of promotional materials in the country.

The coronavirus crisis didn't really harm them either, and we all know that as a result of the public health crisis, most marketing budgets were drastically cut. In fact, in that first year of their business being up and running, they achieved an impressive 3.6 million kuna in revenue (478,000 euros). Their business wasn't affected by the increase in the prices of materials, for example paper by about 15 percent, by products purchased from China by about 40 percent (due to the increase in shipping costs), nor by the increase in delivery days by 30 to 45 days, to 120 days in total.

"We founded the company during the crisis, so we've become used to crises and as such we're optimistic", said the founder of the company, which mainly procures its materials from Europe, mostly from the Netherlands, Poland, Hungary and Portugal, while they procure a smaller part of the assortment from China, but that's mainly what is needed for making products to order.

They also aren't worried about their business results this year due to announcements of a slowdown in economic growth and even a potential crisis. It's well known that in every crisis, the budgets for marketing are cut first, but Bozic isn't afraid of that and expects that the Zagreb Loonapark company will grow by 20 percent this year, as well as the next. They're also planning to employ one to two people in sales. The company will try to achieve more visibility on the market and make even more contacts with the industry at the Days of Communications, one of the biggest events in the field of marketing in all of Croatia, which will soon be held in Rovinj. Loonapark will be a partner of this event this year, and as Bozic pointed out, this represents a good opportunity for them to connect more strongly with industry experts across the board and create new business opportunities.

The long-term plan of this ambitious young Zagreb company is to develop even further and turn into an agency that will offer their clients a very comprehensive approach, i.e. brand development, and then communication campaigns.

"At the end of this year or at the beginning of 2024, we plan to launch new departments within Loonapark,'' announced the CEO of the company, which is currently in one of the most intense periods of the year. Now, Bozic explains, companies are preparing their campaigns for the upcoming summer, so there is a lot of work and inquiries to deal with. The second most intensive period is, as expected, the end of the year, that is, the last quarter.

Bozic emphasised that the success of the Zagreb Loonapark company was definitely contributed by the employees and their intense engagement. In order for the company to be as high quality as possible, it invests a lot in employee education, which they receive through training sessions and various sorts of workshops. According to Bozic, they have no problems with finding and retaining staff, unlike the vast majority of employers in Croatia.

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

February the 7th, 2023 - The Zagreb Tehnika company is expecting to contract jobs worth a massive 55 million euros this year, and it is the selected contractor in a procedure being carried out by the Diocese of Sisak. They'll soon begin work on the structural renovation of a number of churches.

As Suzana Varosanec/Poslovni Dnevnik writes, the aforementioned works on the churches will kick off the phase of the so-called visible renovations, after an "invisible" but extensive set of preparations in which the Diocese of Sisak will take the lead.

The legal deadline for the introduction of contractors into the work is eight days from the signing of the contract, and as it was concluded on January the 25th, it is to be expected that the preparation will begin this week, as confirmed by the director of Tehnika Bojan Horvacic.

This means that works on the buildings can begin soon, and the deadline for completion is seventeen months for one church located in Zazina, and fourteen months for the other two. The contractor companies GME from Sunja and Spegra from Split were chosen for the construction and renovation of the Sisak Cathedral and five other sacred buildings.

The value of the works contracted by the Zagreb Tehnika company reaches a total of 8.1 million euros - 3.3 million for the church in Zazina, and 2.4 million for the others. Capacities have been secured for this, although the Zagreb company will soon already be filling up its book of this year's contracts.

Opportunities on the market for builders are currently favourable and there is plenty of work, but there is still a lack of workers to be had, which, like others, Tehnika has to solve by importing foreign labour, and subcontractors are successively used. Today, this company employs 314 workers and about 60 more people through agency hiring, and due to the growing volume of work, new employment is also underway.

"We're hiring for regular employment, we have a constantly open tender through which we're looking for engineers, foremen, carpenters, rebar workers and masons. I believe that we can attract them by offering a generous income, challenging business opportunities for additional improvement and education, and advancement through the system," said Horvacic, adding that the average salary is close to 1,000 euros.

The share of foreign workers within the Zagreb Tehnika company currently stands at around 30% - they employ Ukrainians, Turks and Georgians, and the current level of contracted jobs for 2023, as well as those about to be signed, amounts to slightly more than 30 million euros, which is a 100% increase compared to same period 2022. The plan for this year is about 55 million euros of contracted jobs.

The ratio of deals signed with investors in the public and private sectors is 70:30, but corrections to that figure are coming, as a wave of contracts with private investors is expected in just a few months.

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

November the 24th, 2022 - The Zagreb IT company BISS, which works with artificial intelligence (AI) is currently working on a very innovative new solution which could see their revenues shoot up over the next year.

As Poslovni Dnevnik/Josipa Ban writes, the Zagreb IT company BISS is known for developing solutions based on AI, which make doing all kinds of business much easier for clients. They're mostly oriented towards the development of platforms in the field of delivery and public safety, and with this brand new solution they are currently developing, they are within reach of concluding a deal that should result in an increase in income of as much as one hundred percent in the next year alone.

"We've been developing this solution for several months now and have already demonstrated it in front of some of our clients. We're now waiting for the implementation of the contract,'' is all that Aleksandar Radovan, the director of development of the Zagreb IT company BISS, could reveal at this moment in time. What can be said is that this regards a solution that will change the public warning system, that is, automate it. They called it Reverse 112, and they have already made a proof of concept.

"The system is designed to work through public surveillance cameras. If you upgrade them by taking pictures from these cameras, you can detect various risky situations, such as car accidents, fires, floods, the gathering of too many people in too small a space and so on. The system automatically reacts and sends notifications to the services in charge of public safety,'' explains Radovan. In addition, this new system could be integrated with telecommunications operators and thus send notifications to all people, warning them of a certain disaster and giving them instructions on how to behave.

"When we had the coronavirus pandemic and the earthquake at the same time, people were sent conflicting information. Some people were told to go out into the streets, and others were instructed to stay inside. People were confused. With this system, which is centralised and authorised by the 112 service, people would receive a clear message and would know exactly how to behave. Thanks to Reverse 112, you wouldn't have to call 112, it would call you," explains Radovan.

He adds that the system, based on AI, virtual reality and autonomous security, is so advanced that it can detect, based on roaming data, whether or not the recipient is a foreigner and then send a warning message to them in their own language.

"Artificial intelligence was tried to be developed 50 years ago, but then the technology wasn't at a level that would enable its efficient use. Today we have the technology and huge amounts of data. Today, artificial intelligence can truly and efficiently solve many problems and bring automation to boring and repetitive jobs," said the director of the Zagreb IT company BISS.

Even their biggest client, the well-known company DPD, was skeptical of their Aimago solution, a package delivery management system.

"In the beginning, the solution was abstract to them, but when we showed them how it worked and what advantages it brings, they soon accepted it," Radovan points out. Not only did they accept it, but they asked that the software of this Zagreb development company, which employs 70 people, be continuously upgraded.

"We're currently improving its functionality so that it will be able to distinguish company packages from those of physical persons," says Radovan, adding that the goal of the system is to detect incorrect or wrong addresses in order to optimise delivery and reduce costs. Differentiating the packages of companies from individuals is important to DPD because they still have different contracts with companies, but they often have a larger amount of packages. Ultimately, all this data contributes to the better organisation of work, and then to greater savings.

DPD is currently the Zagreb IT company BISS's largest client of all, with which they have been successfully cooperating for a decade now, and thanks to which they generate 50 percent of their revenue on foreign markets. This share could also increase due to large projects in the field of public safety.

For more, make sure to keep up with our dedicated business section.

May the 5th, 2022 - The Zagreb company CircuitMess is busy helping people in Nigeria further develop their technical skills thanks to a decision to team up with the Nigerian Shiny Gloves Club, which was made a couple of years ago.

As Poslovni Dnevnik/Darko Bicak writes, the Zagreb company CircuitMess and the Nigerian Shiny Gloves Club have been collaborating for two years now, and last year, CircuitMess donated part of the proceeds from the sale of their DJ counter to their association to give as many Nigerian children as possible the opportunity to participate in their programme and develop their skills.

In one of their classrooms sits gifted and willing student Blessing Yohanna. She is a very bright young girl with a great interest and talent for electronics and making things. Unfortunately, she's in danger of becoming a part of some rather pessimistic statistics. According to a UNICEF survey, more than half of girls in northern Nigeria don't attend classes or have regular schooling. Although Blessing desperately wanted to continue her education and enroll in electrical engineering college, her parents dissuaded her from doing so because they could not afford to continue her education and didn't see any prospects in it as she is a female.

“When we heard that Blessing Yohanna was no longer attending classes and why, we wanted to do something about it. We contacted her family and asked them if we could send her some more of our kits directly to her home address, to encourage her to continue learning and developing her talent for electronics, at least from home,'' said Albert Gajsak, the CEO of the Zagreb company CircuitMess.

A visit by a Shiny Gloves Club employee to her family home bore fruit - when they saw how much Blessing was looking forward to these kits, they decided to give education another chance and allowed her to re-attend the workshops she loves so much.

"It's not that her family was vehemently opposed to her education, but just that they simply can't afford it. I don't think they wanted to give her false hope, because it's impossible for them to imagine that we could raise enough money for Blessing to go to the college she wants to attend so much,'' explained Albert.

That’s why  Shiny Gloves Club first launched the Go Fund Me campaign to raise funds to enable Blessing to continue to study electrical engineering.

“This campaign wasn't launched by us, but by our partners from the Shiny Gloves Club, but we want to do as much as we can to spread the word and help raise the necessary funds. The standard of living in Croatia is much higher than it is in Nigeria, and in most cases we can enroll in college for free. In order to be able to enroll in college, she needs to raise 10,000 US dollars. It seems like a lot, but I believe there are a lot of people who are willing to give up one coffee in a coffee shop or some other little things, and every kuna raised means a lot to make this a beautiful story with a happy ending. Thank you to everyone who donates and shares this news,'' concluded Albert Gajsak of the Zagreb company CircuitMess.

For more, check out Made in Croatia.

April the 26th, 2022 - The Zagreb company Codel boasts a truly unique private robotic laboratory, making it stand out as the only enterprise in the Republic of Croatia to have one to its name.

As Poslovni Dnevnik/Sergej Novosel Vuckovic writes, the Zagreb company Codel, with 30 long years of experience in the manufacture and design of systems for production and industry, will soon become completely ''Krizevci-owned''.

Codel has had a part of its activities in this continental Croatian town since back in 2016, and just recently it presented its laboratory in the Development Centre and Technology Park, where it researches and develops applicable robotics applications for industry. Not only that, but next year in the Gornji Cret Entrepreneurial Zone, the company plans to build a factory of its products.

Synchronised action

The Zagreb company Codel's laboratory, a space with several robotic ''beings'', is reportedly the first and only one of its kind in all of Croatia.

“Here, we show our clients our reach, to make sure they know we can do what they want. We're able to create a complete turnkey project, since the client comes and asks us what the problem is, and we solve it with the help of our technologies,'' explained Tihomir Hodak, the former director of Krizevci Entrepreneurial Centre, and who in recent years has become a member of the Board and the director of business development at Codel.

The range of technologies the Zagreb company Codel deals with includes industrial robotics and robotic movements in production, horizontal and vertical integrations in production, traceability and labelling, as well as Industry 4.0. In the lab itself, they showcased what makes the so-called multirobot cell.

“Several robots work in sync on a complex task, not one single robot at a time but three at a time, each one passing information to the other. For example, in the process of receiving and packing a product, a robotic arm turns its head and sends info to the next one in the line who picks up the product, puts it in a box and then ships it,'' Hodak explained.

"We're also counting on expanding our client base, we've already developed some projects that are awaiting technological approval. We've also done two pilot projects in the United Kingdom for e-commerce,'' Hodak revealed. It is imperative for the Zagreb company Codel, which is why they were at the big Gitex fair in Dubai as one of the only two Croatian companies, to automate logistics and warehousing processes, based on solutions that connect business systems with machines.

“Our goal is to increase efficiency and economy in warehousing processes with our own tech solutions. Only 5 percent of all warehouses in the world are automated to a certain level, and we've established that more than 65 percent of the costs of each warehouse fall on the people themselves. Therefore, any automation significantly reduces costs and errors and increases overall efficiency. However, our system doesn't eliminate jobs, but moves people into more productive jobs, where there can be no robot to do the work,'' pointed out Tihomir Hodak, who will say that his boss, owner and CEO Marijan Sever, is a huge technology enthusiast.

"The company's revenues are at the level of almost 9 million kuna, and that's without robotic projects, next year will those numbers will be significantly higher,'' concluded Tihomir Hodak, praising the work of the Zagreb company Codel's employees, all of whom are very highly qualified engineers.

For more, check out Made in Croatia.

April the 23rd, 2022 - The Zagreb company Holosys has got an owner from the powerful Egyptian Elsewedy group, which has been the owner of the Slovenian Iskraemeco group since back in 2007.

As Poslovni Dnevnik/Marija Brnic writes, the Zagreb company Holosys, a tech group which deals with the production of measuring instruments, has now got a new majority owner, the Slovenian Iskraemeco, seeing it become part of the Egyptian group Elsewedy.

With the announcement of the conclusion of the contract by which this Slovenian company will take over the Zagreb company Holosys, both companies expressed their joint expectations that together they will be able to offer more comprehensive smart solutions for electricity, water and gas, and further expansion in the global market.

Holosys founders Tomislav Lekic, Zoran Zoricic and Ivan Lukacevic have been developing a system for the production of advanced electrical devices based on NB-IoT for remote reading of energy consumption since way back in 2004, which they've since placed on more than 50 markets.

Late last year, Russia was included in the list of export markets, where an important step forward was expected, and for a small company that developed with its own solutions, one of the main references is that more than half a million such measuring instruments worldwide are connected through some of their systems.

Thir range includes power supply modules, data acquisition hubs, antenna systems and data processing software.

The Zagreb company Holosys has about 20 employees and like many other companies during pandemic-dominated 2020, their continuous growth of revenues halted. Data for last year hasn't yet been published yet. They say from Holosys that the movement of income in the period marked by the coronavirus pandemic was certainly marked by global and local trends, with a pronounced disruption of supply chains, which inevitably left an impact on their business.

“The decision to make the Zagreb company Holosys part of the Iskraemeco Group was motivated by strategic development reasons. First of all, through Iskraemeco, Holosys is gaining a strong and experienced partner on the global market, which will increase our market reach. We expect the synergistic effect of complementary technologies and products, and we'll be able to provide additional quality by expanding the portfolio of our services and raise the user experience to a higher level. This is certainly a great opportunity for the growth of our team and an additional step forward on the international market,'' said Tomislav Lekic, the director of Holosys.

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

April the 16th, 2022 - The Zagreb ReversingLabs company has become a member of the world's largest open source security initiative, placing Croatia on the map of success in yet another sector.

As Poslovni Dnevnik writes, among the 20 global technology and other companies that joined Linux's Open Source Security Foundation in March (OpenSSF) is the Zagreb ReversingLabs company, a cybersecurity specialist enterprise and one of the fastest growing IT companies in all of Croatia.

OpenSSF has been operating under the auspices of the non-profit Linux Foundation since August 2020, and it brings together the world's most important initiatives to increase open source security. The latest round of membership enlargement saw Spotify, MongoDB, Alibaba Cloud, Citi, Huawei Technologies and others join, as well as the Zagreb ReversingLabs company. This followed recent speeches to congressional bodies on the growing risks of open source and the need to increase its security. The White House also held a summit on the same topic.

Open source security is under the magnifying glass of the American authorities after a number of organisations and corporations were attacked back in 2020 and 2021 through the software supply chain. With the May 2021 decree, American President Joe Biden enacted a series of measures to improve the security of software and digital infrastructure in the country, and a significant portion of those measures relate to the supply chain. Further improvements to the regulatory framework are also expected.

“More and more new threats are coming from the software supply chain, and among them are risks from the open source ecosystem. Due to a number of interdependencies and complexities, companies often don't have any insight into the origin of the code and components built into their software. It's difficult for them to recognise malicious elements in applications and track every component from its origin to the final version of the software. We're happy to join OpenSSF and we believe that we can contribute in the field of automation of more complex lists of software components, as well as when it comes to further reducing risks related to the supply chain and software development process,'' said Mario Vuksan, CEO and co-founder of the Zagreb ReversingLabs company.

''Open source is the foundation on which software is built today. Our work at OpenSSF, along with the contributions of companies and individuals from around the world, is key to the improvements we want to achieve,'' said Brian Behlendorf, the CEO of OpenSSF. According to him, OpenSFF is a neutral forum with broad support through which significant progress can be made when it comes to open source security.

The Zagreb ReversingLabs company

ReversingLabs has built the world's largest malware database through a development centre located right here in Zagreb. The company, founded back in 2009 by Mario Vuksan and Tomislav Pericin, won the title of Black Unicorn in the United States of America for the third year in a row last year. It is awarded in the cybersecurity industry to companies with growth potential up to a market value of one billion dollars. ReversingLabs' development centre and expertise are all in Zagreb, and their customers - leading social networks, antivirus companies, corporations and government agencies - are rrom all around the world.

So far, they have raised 81 million US dollars in two investment rounds and invested it in new product development, organisational growth and further placement in the US market. They employ 120 people here in Zagreb, and another 60 in the American city of Boston. They have significant sales and marketing activities in the US, where they have been present almost since their inception.

The Zagreb ReversingLabs company was also among the first to interpret the anatomy of the attack on the American IT company SolarWinds, which marked the entire year of 2021 and is one of the largest known cyber incidents in the world to date.

For more, check out our business section.

April the 13th, 2022 - The Zagreb startup Optimoroute has been gaining some truly excellent results across the pond on the American market.

As Poslovni Dnevnik/Sergej Novosel Vuckovic writes, the recently held American-Croatian Forum in Zagreb raised questions from many domestic companies about what they can provide to Americans and Americans in business. The successful Zagreb startup Optimoroute was able to give them the answer and a hint at the direction in which they should go.

The Zagreb startup Optimoroute stated that Croatian enterprises should try to place an innovative product with expertise in its application and adaptation for different industries. The company run by the Saric brothers - Marin (Chief Executive Officer, CEO) and Frane (Chief Technical Officer, CTO), as co-owners (the third is their friend Goran Kukolj) has developed software, ie a platform for route optimisation and organisation and scheduling field work for the likes of deliverymen and drivers, which brings savings to companies.

With today's disrupted logistics-distribution-supply chains, any method that would reduce the consumption of both variables in the saying "time is money" is highly desirable, and this is best recognised by Americans, Optimoroute's most numerous customers, of which they have more than 2,500 worldwide.

"Our biggest market is America and it has the strongest growth (70 percent of all our revenue), and we have very good results in Europe, Australia and New Zealand. Our sales team routinely deals in foreign markets without talking to them live or on the phone. How much we've grown is best shown by the fact that this year alone we sent several million SMS messages through which we informed our customers about the details of their deliveries or the arrival of their service technicians,'' the Zagreb startup Optimoroute's founders explained. There are also small florists and factories, distributors, and also sector leaders among their clients:

“Our client and fresh food supplier is Hardie’s whose 160 trucks make thousands of deliveries a day across the state of Texas. With the OptimoRoute platform, they reduced the distance travelled by 20 percent and increased their delivery capacity by 16 percent. The planning process has been accelerated 8 times, and now one person is doing what a team of people used to do,'' say the Saric brothers. Just how efficient and adaptable their innovative platform is for all SUVs is illustrated by yet another example:

"When a severe snowstorm hit the northeastern United States recently, some 16 million Americans were affected. The services involved in snow removal used our platform with which they could act in the field much faster. Given that with our software, one person does more work in half a day than a team of 8 logisticians would do in a month, it isn't surprising that we've reached a lot of clients,'' explained the men behind the Zagreb startup Optimoroute.

"We're currently in talks and we hope that some of those talks will result in some new customers as they're aware of the importance of modernising their logistics to become more competitive in the global market," said Frane and Marin Saric. An important piece of news for their business, aside from the fact that they have doubled their number of employees to 40 since the beginning of the coronavirus pandemic and that they have grown significantly when it comes to revenue, they also believe that they have attracted top managers. Although their entire engineering process is right here in Croatia, Optimoroute is, as they say, an international company that employs experts from the USA, as well as from the rest of Europe in France, Germany and the United Kingdom.

"As energy prices continue to rise, companies are becoming more sensitive to fuel consumption, which is another reason why our platform is so useful to them," concluded Frane and Marin Saric from the Zagreb startup Optimoroute.

For more, check out Made in Croatia.

February the 16th, 2022 - The Zagreb company Altpro has spent time ''conquering'' India over recent years, and now it has entered the Egyptian market with its work on an extremely important motorail transport connection.

As Poslovni Dnevnik/Darko Bicak writes, the Zagreb company Altpro is currently working on a monorail transport connection between Cairo and two new satellite cities, one of which will become the country's new capital.

Namely, as Tin Viduka, a member of the Management Board of Altpro in charge of sales and marketing, explained, this is one of this company's biggest projects, which they entered into with their long-term global partners - Bombardier and Alstom. Although they aren't currently allowed to talk about the financial aspects of it all due to the confidentiality of the contract, they emphasise that this is a significant and very far-reaching project.

"This project is very important to us because, in addition to entering a new market with great potential, it involves a new technology that we've been developing for a long time now. In this business, we participate with signaling systems for infrastructure that guarantee high reliability and improved security. Our axle counting systems for single-track rails are currently unique in the field of control and detection of non-standard train types. Speed sensors, direction sensors and the position of single-track trains exchange this vital information with other infrastructure subsystems,'' said Viduka, the son of the founder and CEO of the Zagreb company Altpro, Zvonimir Viduka.

The company explained that there are two monorail lines in Egypt, spanning a total length of about a hundred kilometres.

The first of them, spanning 54 kilometres, will connect eastern Cairo with the new administrative capital, currently called the "New Capital City" and should have almost seven million inhabitants living in it, and the second line of 42 kilometres will connect the Cairo suburb of Giza with a new city officially named the "6th of October City ”.

This somewhat unusual name for the city, which already boasts about half a million inhabitants, is actually named in memory of October the 6th, 1973, when the 4th Arab-Israeli War, better known as the Yom Kippur War or the Ramadan War, began. It was an armed conflict fought from the 6th to the 25th of October 1973 between Israel and a coalition of Arab states led by Egypt and Syria.

Egypt stood out during the conflict, as, instead of sending in soldiers and tanks, it put water engineers in the forefront and occupied Suez and the whole of Sinai. 

However, due to unrealistic changes in the plans which almost did succeed in bringing Israel to its knees, the whole campaign collapsed and Israel surrounded and destroyed the Arab forces, coming in tanks in front of Cairo and Damascus, which resulted in US and USSR involvement in the crisis.

However, October the 6th remains a big date and Armed Forces Day in Egypt today. Both lines are expected to open in 2023 and will be able to carry about 45,000 passengers per hour in each direction.

Travel time will be significantly reduced to about 60 minutes for the first line and about 42 minutes for the second. The Cairo Monorail will use 70 fully automated Bombardier INNOVIA Monorail 300 trains, ie ones without a train driver, which will be produced in Derby, England.

Business for the Zagreb company Altpro in Los Angeles

The Zagreb company Altpro's impressive reference list also includes a project at Los Angeles International Airport (LAX). It involves the delivery of a control system for the APM (Automatic People Mover) train used to transport passengers within the airport itself. The delivery currently includes state-of-the-art technology for the management and detection of trains of specific dimensions and requirements.

Although the financial results for last year are not yet known, the company states that 2021 was a record year for them and that they expect double-digit revenue growth compared to the previous record year od pandemic-dominated 2020, when they achieved about 70 million kuna in revenue.

"We have three big projects and a number of smaller ones under our belts, and we expect double digit growth this year as well. Along with India and now Egypt, after a long lull, the Croatian railway market has finally opened up again. A lot is being invested in infrastructure and new railway vehicles. We're mostly engaged in the section of the Krizevci-Koprivnica-Hungarian border railway, and where we're actually a system integrator with consortium partners - we produce, deliver and install the equipment. We expect that this growth of the Croatian market will continue in the next period as well,'' believes Viduka.

For more, check out our dedicated business section.

January the 7th, 2022 - The Zagreb company Delt Papir is well known here in Croatia, and it seems that they're branching out, aiming not just at Europe, but at far more distant markets such as that of Japan.

As Novac/Jutarnji/Vedran Marjanovic writes, formerly known for its technological innovations and breakthroughs in the production of paper hygiene products and sanitary equipment, the Zagreb company Delt papir has made another noteworthy business step these days by founding a company in no less than Japan.

This is the company Tubeless Japan, with which the Zagreb company Delt Papir, as its director Krunoslav Kisak explained, will try to penetrate one of the strongest and richest markets in the entire world.

''Tubeless is a brand of Delt papir with which we're present in 27 countries across Europe and the Middle East through our distributors. The opening of the company in Japan is a big step forward for our company in terms of the further internationalisation of the Tubeless brand,'' said Kisak. Alen Krajacic is a member of the Management Board and co-owner of Delt Papir alongside Kisak, and the company has been operating since back in 2003.

The most logical reaction to the aforementioned business step for the Zagreb company Delt Papir would be that this is the first company founded by Croatian businessmen in one of the world's leading economic powers and one of the strongest and richest, and many would also add the most closed off markets in the world.

''According to our Ambassador to Japan Drazen Hrastic, during his tenure in the past six years, no Croatian company has opened a branch in Japan,'' revealed Kisak, confirming the assessment at least for the latest period of Croatian-Japanese economic relations.

According to the CBS, Croatia exports goods worth 334 million kuna a year to Japan, with food products such as tuna, wine, cheese and olive oil having the largest share. Japan is not even among the 25 most important export markets for Croatian companies, and given this data, Delt Papir's decision to enter the Japanese market only gains more weight.

''Japan's market is quite literally enormous in terms of its users, as it is a country with 126 million inhabitants, but also as the world's third largest economy. This market is ready for Croatian IoT innovation which increases and facilitates the insight into the consumption of paper towels, toilet paper, soap and other consumables and provides a level of control over it, all through our software that is unique,'' Kisak explained when discussing the motives Delt Papir has which made them create Tubeless Japan.

The Tubeless brand includes, among other things, toilet paper with a specific packaging without a cardboard tube, soap holders and disinfectants. For the further development of this brand, the Zagreb company Delt Papir was also provided with co-financing from the European Regional Development Fund through support totalling 7.8 million kuna.

''Over on the Japanese market, we expect accelerated sales growth, which we believe we'll successfully be able to monitor given the investment in the new production capacities of Tubeless products over the last 12 months, worth almost 23 million kuna. In Japan, the hygiene of everything in general, including in toilets, is at an unimaginably high level, so we're convinced that Tubeless, along with the IoT solution, is perfect for the Japanese market,'' said Kisak.

Asked whether the Zagreb company Delt Papir could count on the help of the Croatian Embassy in Tokyo when it arrived on the Japanese market, Kisak said that it provided an introductory presentation of Tubeless products and networking.

''We started thinking about starting the company Tubeless Japan back in 2019 with our colleague Edward Vondra, who has been living in Japan since 2014,'' Kisak noted.  Referring to the regulatory conditions in Japan when it comes to opening a company, Kisak explained that starting a company isn't much more complex than the procedure to do the same here in Croatia.

''The most time was spent adjusting to Japanese laws and getting multiple translations of documents with certain specifics that each country has when opening a new company. The biggest specificity is that everything that is done in Japan must be perfect. Perfect in design, functionality and innovation. We believe that Tubeless is just such a brand,'' concluded the director of the Zagreb company Delt Papir, which employs about 70 people in its plants and business offices in Jankomir, and ended the last business year with annual revenue of 134 million kuna in 2020 and a profit of ten million kuna.

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