The small town of Pitomača, northeast of Zagreb, is about to become a global tea manufacturing centre, thanks to the new, large factory planned by the Croatian company Spider Grupa. Construction will start this summer on a 5,000-square-metre site, and in the final phase it will bring 150 new jobs.

“This will be a factory with the largest capacity in the wider region. We are talking about a €4 million investment, half of which will be invested new manufacturing lines. Two million euros were drawn from EU funds,” said Denis Nemčević, president of the management board of Spider Grupa.

The group’s subsidiaries supply large tea factories around the world, and provide retail packaging services for other businesses. They produce their own brands called Gardenolo and Naturavita, and also package teas for store brands, including Coop and Lidl in Italy, Aldi in France, Hofer in Austria, and Auchan in Russia.

Nemčević said the facility could be opened by spring 2019. The company currently manufactures some 10 million boxes of tea, and the new factory, once operating, is expected to produce double that. However, only a small portion of their product will be sold in the Croatian market, Poslovni Dnevnik reported.

“We export about 80 percent of everything we make, and all our new projects are directly linked to export. We are negotiating contracts with Lidl in seven countries, including Germany and France,” he says.

Camomile for company teas is grown in Croatia, but ingredients for all other teas are imported from their source – for example hibiscus in Nigeria, Sudan, Vietnam. After being processed and packaged, they are shipped to markets around the world. Last year, their revenue was around 65 million kuna (€8.7 million).

(€1 = 7.43 kuna)