January the 15th, 2026 – A look at Croatian exports and their associated numbers throughout 2025, with plenty of positives to praise.
As Poslovni Dnevnik/Marija Brnic writes, despite all the concerning headlines that floated around last year, the figures for Croatian exports maintained very solid growth in 2025. The first preliminary data for the first eleven months of last year show that Croatian exports were five percent higher on an annual basis (compared to 4.1% in the 11 months of 2024). Over 23 billion euros worth of goods were exported from Croatia, and sales to the EU are clearly growing faster than to so-called third countries. Due to the dynamics of data processing by the Central Bureau of Statistics, only the data for the first ten months of 2025 provide a somewhat more concrete picture of the changes, and it is evident from them that the fastest export growth has been recorded in the traditionally most important markets.
expectations have been exceeded for croatian exports in 2025
Croatian exports throughout 2025 recorded double-digit growth rates to Germany (almost 13%), Slovenia (12.3%), with exports to Italy (6.6%) also finally recovering. The indicators are still weaker than in 2024, in terms of export results with the USA, which is partly a reflection of Trump’s announced tariffs on EU products and the stronger exports they will stimulate in 2024, while the value of exports to Russia, China, and Canada is growing from more distant markets.
Looking at trade relations with Germany, although analysts’ estimates constantly assumed such a scenario, there was no weakening of the value of exports last year either. The situation was quite on the contrary. In ten months, 2.7 billion euros of products were exported (around 300 million euros more than the year before), and if you look at the more detailed CBS data processed by product for the first three quarters of 2025, it can be seen that in the structure of the main products, much more final products are being sent from Croatia to the German market than to many other countries, for example, neighbouring Italy.
The main products exported from Croatia to Germany are electrical transformers, whose value in the first three quarters of 2025 amounted to 159 million euros, electric batteries (52 million), cables (151 million), footwear (93 million), medicines (44 million), prefabricated buildings (62 million), chocolate products (84 million). On the other hand, to Italy, which was replaced on the export throne by Germany a few years ago and surpassed by Slovenia, raw materials and products with a low degree of processing dominate as the main export items.
As such, in the first three quarters of last year, 99 million euros worth of corn, 73 million euros worth of wheat, 58 million euros worth of live cattle, 57 million euros of fresh fish, 83 million euros of fuel wood and 71 million euros of sawed wood, 46 million euros of slag wool, and 50 million euros of iron scrap were exported.
lng gas is on the up, as is croatia’s energy reputation
Looking at neighbouring Slovenia, Croatian companies export plenty of cables (174 million euros worth of it), and in recent years, LNG gas, which was sold from the Krk plant in the first three quarters of 2025 to the value of 120 million euros. The structure also shows the export of electricity worth 98 million euros (378 million euros of electricity were imported from Slovenia), and the export of medicines worth 46 million (256 million were imported at the same time).
One of the European markets where Croatian exports have recorded continuous growth since joining the EU is France, and data from the Croatian Bureau of Statistics shows that steam boilers (38 million), cables (38 million), medicines (14 million) and products and preparations that statistics classify as human blood (26 million) are successfully passing through it.
The latter are also being exported to the US in even greater quantities, with 30 million in the first three quarters of last year (in the entire previous 2024, as much as 96 million euros were exported to the US). Medicines themselves, which are still the best-selling Croatian product on the US market, were exported in the three quarters to the value of 127 million euros, and Končar’s electrical transformers (90 million) and HS Produkt’s weapons (68 million) also recorded a successful result.
On the other hand, the main imported product from across the pond in the USA remains LNG, with 397 million euros worth of imports in the three quarters of 2025. On an annual basis, however, much like exports, it is recording weaker realisation. Croatian exports to the Russian market continued to grow in 2025, mainly due to the export of medicines, and China is one of the countries where exports are growing again – 93 million euros were exported in the first ten months of last year.
