As Novac/Bernard Ivezic writes, on Monday, the Solin startup started mass-producing smart benches and smart waste bins. In one shift a year, 1,300 of them will be made. By comparison, since back in 2016, meaning since the establishment of production, until the end of last year, the Solin company Include has made a little less than 1,600 such items.
The Solin company Include’s founder and director Ivan Mrvos has stated that they have launched a new production line worth 1.4 million kuna in total, half of which is co-financed by HBOR, in order to meet the expected growth in demand this year and in the years ahead of us.
”We’ve already filled our production capacities for the next three to four months with orders from Germany, Singapore and Canada, and as vaccination and the opening up of the economies abroad continue to progress, there’s a possibility that we’ll be able to open a second shift during the summer months,” noted Mrvos.
His plan, as he explained, is to increase the Solin company Include’s sales to 2.5 million euros during 2021. He expects that within that amount of 2.5 million euros, the new series of Steora smart benches alone will manage to bring in around one million euros, and growth should be generated by their Terra smart waste bins. The company had revenue of about 900,000 euros last year, despite the pandemic. That result, according to Mrvos, is proof that even in dire times, there remains a demand for their smart benches.
”Now we’re going one step further and offering smart bins to cities. We have competition, but our bins are 45 percent cheaper than other, similar products and instead of seven to eight years, the cities can return their investment on them in half the time,” said Mrvos.
He added that they have made more progress with the new generation of smart benches. In addition to the new design, new technology has also been developed, and the new Croatian smart benches can now compete with ordinary, classic benches in terms of price. In the last year and a half alone, Include has invested three million kuna in the development of the new Steora series. A team of 22 experts worked on it, including a doctor of science.
”We can offer more affordable products also because we now have our own serial production. We have machines, a paint shop and other things, and we’re employing ten people on the new line,” concluded entrepreneur Ivan Mrvos.
For more on Croatian-made products and domestic companies, visit Made in Croatia.
