Vuković: HS Produkt is increasingly exporting to other markets alongside the American one

President Kolinda Grabar Kitarović, as part of her three-day work in Karlovac County, where she temporarily relocated her office, visited the Karlovac arms factory HS Produkt on Monday evening, whose pistols and assault rifles are exported worldwide.

After a meeting with the company’s management, attended by the leaders of Karlovac County and the City of Karlovac, the president did not make any statements to the media, and the fifty percent owner of the company, Marko Vuković, told Hina that the president received information on economic topics, primarily regarding HS Produkt, that almost all production is exported.

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‘An update for HS Produkt is that the export ratio has changed. While previously most of the production was exported to the American market, now even 40 percent of exports are to other markets. Namely, we are working with American customers as before, but other markets are growing, exports to various other countries,’ said Vuković.

Among other things, Vuković stated that approximately 600,000 pieces of pistols and about 70,000 assault rifles, designed in Karlovac, are exported each year, and that the earlier plan for HS Produkt to also start an ammunition factory is currently being abandoned because there are already many ammunition factories in the world.

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‘The smallest profitable line should produce 400 million pieces of ammunition annually, for which there is currently no market. There is no need for that because the Croatian army and police consume less ammunition than HS Produkt, which uses 12 million pieces annually for product testing. If we were to establish a factory, we would have to direct 80 or 90 percent to exports, and next to factories in Belgium, America, and, for example, Russia, that is not realistic at this time,’ said Vuković, adding that the situation is currently such, but that the need for building a factory has not been completely abandoned because ammunition is currently imported ‘and each according to their own.’