As Poslovni Dnevnik/Darko Bicak writes, an inspector from the TÜV delivery had nothing but praise for the Croatian company Sinitech when checking things out for a client in the UK, stating: ”over the 20 years I’ve been in this business, I haven’t seen anything like this produced in Croatia before.”
This company processes equipment, the most complex of all are the bulky heat exchangers. As the co-owners of the company, Tonci Peric, in the position of CEO, and Zvonimir Rosa, who is in charge of marketing and sales, explained, these are pieces of equipment whose individual parts weigh up to 52 tonnes.
We’re expecting a lot of growth in the coming period, and I’m afraid that due to limitations, primarily in terms of available labour, we won’t be able to accept all projects which come to us,” said Peric, whose company manufactures equipment for the energy, food and chemical industries.
Sinitech Industries has its roots in one of the largest Croatian metallurgical industries, Jedinstvo, of which one part of this company emerged. Over the past 30 years, there have been structural and ownership changes, and the current ownership and management structure has been in place as it is since 2020.
“Back in 2019, the Croatian company Sinitech had a revenue of some eight million kuna, even with a number of problems in its business. Last year, we stabilised our business and increased that revenue sum to 20 million. This year, we exceeded that amount in the first half of the year and we expect a minimum of 30 million kuna in revenue, and at least 50 million for next year,” pointed out Peric.
Until last year, the company operated in its “traditional” space, from the time of Jedinstvo, in Zagreb’s Jankomir. However, as it was a relatively small business space and an unprofitable investment in that location, they decided to head further east, to Sisak.
“Even before, half of our employees came from Sisak, so that city was among our first options,” said Zvonimir Rosa, emphasising the interesting fact that they moved production to Sisak, but kept their salaries at the level of those acceptable for the City of Zagreb.
He added that in the next year, they plan to invest more than 10 million kuna in this new Sisak space. They also employ 55 people, along with 15 more in the company Probotica, which is related to the Zagreb Faculty of Mechanical Engineering and Naval Architecture.
“We aren’t connected only by ownership, we’re connected in every other way. We simply estimated that Probotica has a team of successful engineers, scientists, managers and consultants who ideally fit synergistically into what we do. They had the same assessment for us. So, we head off into all of these projects together, actually as one company. They have the capacity to develop innovative projects based on the latest achievements of modern science and technology, and we have the knowledge and capacity to achieve and sell it all,” explained Peric.
He added that he decided on a kind of business extension through the new company due to strict technological standards and customer requirements that do not allow for what’s known as the “contamination” of technology, especially by mixing production processes using black steel on one side and stainless steel on the other.
Although most of their clients ask for their names and orders to remain secret when signing contracts, they state that almost all Croatian food and pharmaceutical companies are among their customers, and one of the projects that stand out is for Coca-Cola in Zemun, Serbia.
“Currently, 30 percent of our sales go to the Croatian market, and 70 percent to exports. We export the most to the European countries – Austria, Germany and Great Britain, and we are strengthening our presence in both Italy and France. We also have projects on other continents, such as the milk powder plant and Gum Arabic, the raw material for the pharmaceutical industry, in Sudan, but these are just individual cases,” said the CEO of the Croatian Sinitech company.
Although the coronavirus crisis has caused serious business problems for most companies, Sinitech says it has actually helped them by shortening supply chains and returning the industry from China back ”home” to Europe, which has put their company in the focus of European customers.
You can learn more about Sinitech here.
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