Through the Bjelin company, Swedish capital offers serious investment into Croatia’s wood sector.
Just last year, Bjelin produced 800,000 squares of parquet in Ogulin, and has now purchased land in the business zone where they are building a new plant.
As Poslovni Dnevnik writes on the 5th of June, 2018, the Swedish-Croatian Pervan Group’s investment via the Bjelin company has already been fully recognised in the Croatian economy. Its owner, the renowned Swedish entrepreneur of Croatian heritage, Darko Pervan, has ambitious goals because he wants Bjelin to become the most technologically modern company and the leading position in Croatia when it comes to producing floor linings.
Pervan entered onto the Croatian market fourteen years ago, and his investments in tourism have amounted to over 460 million kuna. Four years ago in Sweden, he started producing Woodure and Nadure, made entirely of wood. The Swedish factory covers Northern Europe, Scandinavia and Benelux as well as Germany, and all other markets are covered by the Bjelin factory in Ogulin and Bjelovar.
“We’re ready to offer a serious salary to our employees, and you’ve got to ask the question: Can a worker who earns a minimum salary of 2,700 kuna who at the same time is working for a machine worth 10 million kuna, do so responsibly without further stimulation. The first move, on our first day of entering the factory, was to raise salaries by 40 percent. We also paid a 2,500 kuna Christmas bonus, and since January the 1st this year, salaries have risen by an additional 10 percent. Our goal is to double it all. We want to show human relationships and maximum empathy to our employees, to care for them in case of illness. In short, the ultimate goal is profit, but profit in our case is primarily a measure of success, not the wealth and money that the owner and his management will enjoy,” Pervan said.
Otherwise, as previously mentioned, last year Bjelin produced a massive 800,000 squares of parquet in Ogulin, and has now purchased land in the business zone, and is investing in a new veneer joining plant, HDF board production, and more floor linings. It is expected that the construction of the new plant will last until the summer of 2019, after which the start of serial production is planned.
