August the 10th, 2026 – Croatia is very unfortunately set to lose an industrial giant after 106 years of operation in the country.
As Dubravko Grakalic writes for Index, Croatia is very sadly losing yet another symbol of its formerly rich industrial heritage. After over a century of continuous operation, the company Chromos, which became a “second name” for paints and varnishes on the domestic market, is ceasing production in Croatia. The decision was made by the Japanese owner, the company Kansai Helios, which announced that production will continue in Količevo in Slovenia and in the Serbian town of Gornji Milanovac, while only a sales network will remain in Zagreb.
The shutdown of production in Croatia marks the end of a tradition that began back in 1920, during which Chromos was the largest producer of paints, varnishes, plastics and resins in all of former Yugoslavia. Back during the mid-1980s, Chromos was an industrial giant that employed around 4,500 people. Today, about a hundred workers are employed at the Zagreb Chromos plant in Žitnjak – most of whom will tragically lose their jobs – while the company Kansai Helios still has around sixty employees in Croatia.
“Chromos is a brand with a deep tradition and an invaluable legacy in Croatia, based on decades of dedicated work by our employees,” said Goran Dolenec, director of Chromos boje i lakovi d.d. and KANSAI HELIOS Croatia d.o.o., in a media statement.
From a small workshop to an industrial giant
Today’s Chromos originated from a small paint-mixing workshop belonging to the wholesaler Bernard Moster in 1920. The plant with around thirty workers was located on Radnička Street, in premises that had previously housed a soap factory. In the first year they produced around 500 tonnes of paints and varnishes; production expanded with the construction of the main factory building in 1923. In the following years the factory complex grew to include around ten more buildings.
Both production and the number of employees increased – by 1940 there were 162 workers who produced more than 1,800 tonnes of paints – and new technologies and products were developed, such as plant-protection coatings. During the so-called Independent State of Croatia (1941-1945) the factory changed its name to Oil and Lacquer Industry, while after liberation in 1945, it received the name Perunika.
Alongside Bernard Moster’s company, Chromos is also the successor of the tradition of the company of the same name for the production of graphic inks, which the German company Springer-Moller from Leipzig founded in 1923 in Samobor. The Samobor Chromos produced graphic inks and rotary-press ink with which all newspapers in the then Yugoslavia were printed. Business went so well that at the end of the 1930s they also built a factory in Zemun.
Perunika and Chromos were merged in 1947 into a single enterprise, Chromos, Chemical Industry Zagreb. Altogether they had around two hundred workers in the Zagreb and Samobor plants. The Chromos Research Institute was founded in 1955 and worked on polymer synthesis.
Industrial development continued through links with the companies Katran and Pliva – which produced paints until 1962. A major amalgamation in 1964 created the Chemical Combine Chromos – Katran – Kutrilin, which became the leading producer in the former Yugoslavia. In the 1970s the companies Labud from Zagreb and Svjetlost from Slavonski Lužani joined the combine.
The largest producer in croatia’s entire immediate region
During its period of greatest growth the Chromos combine built a Graphic Institute, a production complex in Žitnjak that today spans 100,000 square metres, and several more laboratory plants. In 1979 they employed around 3,900 workers, produced around 180 thousand tonnes of various chemical products and exported to around twenty countries, primarily to the then Soviet Union.
Back during the 1980s, the Chromos-Katran-Kutrilin combine, with 4,500 workers, was the largest producer of its kind in the region, followed by Slovenian Helios and Zorka Šabac from Serbia, which today operates through several companies. At that time the Chromos business tower was also built on the corner of Vukovarska and Heinzelova streets, one of the symbols of the eastern part of Zagreb. It was erected in 1989 according to the design of architects Marijan Turkulin and Petar Vovk. It is considered the last skyscraper built in Zagreb before the Homeland War.
The Chromos tower is fifteen storeys high, or sixty metres. It was the main centre of the Chromos combine; today it houses offices of several dozen companies employing around 600 people.
Privatisation in 1993 divided the Chromos combine into 16 independent companies. Four firms collapsed in the following years, while the others still operate today under different owners. Chromos Tvornica smola operates as part of the Scott Bader group, while the Samobor Chromos d.d. produces graphic inks as an independent company. The former Chromos Aroma operates as Ireks Aroma in Jastrebarsko, while Chromos Argo, Katran, Kutrilin TPV, Komicro, Svjetlost and Hempel continue to operate normally.
general slobodan praljak purchased their land
The complex business structure of the vast Chromos and the privatisation of the 1990s still create confusion about what has survived of the former industrial giant. The story of the Zagreb Chromos real estate is also interesting.
From October 1995 to June 1996 the president of the Management Board of the company Chromos boje i lakovi d.d. was HV General Slobodan Praljak, later convicted in The Hague. Great public attention was therefore aroused by the sale of 27,000 square metres of land to the company Oktavijan d.o.o. in 1999, whose owner was precisely this same Slobodan Praljak. The land was sold for four million four hundred thousand German marks and today a business centre stands there.
In a 2003 report by the State Audit Office it is stated that the land was paid less than the estimated value: “The said real estate was valued in the conversion procedure at 5,198,383 DEM, and the cost of acquiring an additional 1,137 m² amounted to 1,102,039 DEM, which totals 6,300,422 DEM. The said real estate was sold for 1,900,422 DEM less than the estimated value and the cost of acquiring the additional area.”
the sale to helios and the end of the line…
The company Chromos boje i lakovi from Zagreb’s Žitnjak was sold back in 2001 to Helios from Domžale – its former main market competitor. It is not known how much that takeover amounted to, but the media estimate that the value of the remaining assets of Chromos boje i lakovi at the time was fifteen million euros.
It is known that Helios bought the shares of small shareholders and acquired ownership of the plant, brands and patents. The Austrian owners, Ring International Holding, sold Helios in 2017 for 572 million euros to the Japanese company Kansai Paint.
The story of the break-up of the Chromos combine and the recent shutdown of production of the largest company that emerged from its conversion is an interesting component of the history of privatisation and the collapse of national industry. Chromos boje i lakovi – a company that closed the last business year with a profit – after 106 long years is becoming a wholesale trading company. Just like the one from which Bernard Moster made a factory in 1920.
