CROATIA
Arbacommerce has invested EUR3m in a new processing plant
Ambitions to build its own brand Arbacommerce specialises in processing anchovies and sardines into salted, marinated, and frozen products for the domestic and international market. Demand has been brisk so the company has expanded production, building a big new facility just five years after having completed the first one.
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roatia is well known for its salted anchovies which are made from raw material procured from the Adriatic Sea. Although distributed throughout the Eastern Atlantic the fish caught in the Adriatic has a special reputation, which processors not only in Croatia, but also in Italy, and Albania have exploited. Croatian processors provide both the finished product as well as semi-finished products that might be finally processed at some other location. The anchovies may be produced under private label or branded with the producer’s own label. Two of the biggest Italian producers of salted anchovies have production facilities in Croatia. One of the domestic companies that produces its own label is Arbacommerce, which has its head office in Zadar and its processing factory in Lubin in the Istria region in the north eastern part of the country.
A crisis is a good time to invest Arbacommerce is owned by two brothers Nikica and Pavle Paunovic and their mother. The company was established in 1994 and started working in the fish trade in 1999. Initially the brothers were distributing fresh fish, but then seeing an opportunity and making use of funding that was available from the EU, the brothers decided to build a processing factory to process small pelagic www.eurofishmagazine.com
fish, mainly sardines and anchovies. The factory was completed in 2007 and very shortly afterwards Arbacommerce began to experience that the area they had constructed was inadequate. The onset of the financial and economic crisis in 2009 slowed down the economy, but according to Nikica Paunovic also provided an opportunity to expand. Credit was cheaper, construction companies had less work and were more available, so it was a good time to invest. In September 2011 construction started on a new building a few meters away from the old one on the same site. While the old building was 1,400 sq. m, the new one is 2,500 sq. m and will have additional freezing capacity. The company’s range of products includes, frozen fish, sardine fillets, marinated fish and salted fish. The company produces mainly semi-finished products such as salted anchovies in 25 kg barrels, or privately labelled salted anchovy fillets in retail packs of 100 g, 200 g, and glass jars. The raw material for the fish production comes from fishermen with whom the company has long term contracts. The fishing is roughly divided into seasons with sardines caught in the winter season from October to March and anchovies caught from the spring to the end of autumn. From the middle of December to the middle of January fishing is
Pavle Paunovic (left), Chief Operations Officer, and his brother, Nikica Paunovic, the Chief Executive Officer of Arbacommerce.
Marinated anchovy fillets in plastic trays. The plastic containers can vary in size from 75 g to 1,000 g.
prohibited. Semi-processed products are being sold on the company’s markets in France, Spain, and Italy, where local companies will carry out the final processing. This could, for example, be salted anchovies which need to be filleted and packaged, or frozen sardines to be used by the canning industry. We are also developing
our own line of products says Nikica Paunovic, but establishing a new brand on the international market is an expensive and time consuming process that demands a very long term commitment. Consumers everywhere prefer the brands they know and Spain, France, and Italy all have their own brands which have been Eurofish Magazine 6 / 2012
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