Learning to run his own business and manage risk was the first step and the first invested money Zoran Šimunić when he decided to start producing fresh pasta at the beginning of the second millennium, while simultaneously developing the raw materials production segment for the bakery industry. Today, that company in a new building in Kupljenovo near Zaprešić produces a thousand tons of fresh and frozen pasta and raw materials for baking annually. However, Šimunić, alongside production at Naše klasje, strives to build an image as an environmentally conscious producer.
Who knows what would have happened if it weren’t for the war in 1991. At the end of September that year, Šimunić graduated, the next day his father was wounded, and two days later his village near Vinkovci was occupied. A job he had lined up at a local agricultural company fell through, and since many experienced agronomists were left unemployed after the war, he had to take a job in the warehouse of a large company in Velika Gorica (later, with a university education and knowledge of three languages, he advanced). The company found itself in trouble and sought a way out by establishing a wholesale business, but Zoran Šimunić wanted more.
Speaking about how he raised money to establish the company by borrowing his parents’ entire savings and what he managed to earn from his own wholesale business he had started a few years earlier, we expected him to first talk about how he invested in the facility in the Zagreb neighborhood of Voltino. We were somewhat surprised when he said that he first invested part of that money – in knowledge.
– Risk management determines how far you will throw because the project will last as long as you have knowledge. That’s why I completed my MBA in Bled, which greatly shaped me as a businessman. Bled confirmed what I suspected: if a person does not have marketable knowledge, it makes no sense to enter such projects – he explains.
Self-made technologist
Knowing how to manage risk would later prove crucial, especially during the global financial crisis, as well as the current pandemic. This agronomist founded the company in 2001 after realizing that the wholesale business he opened a few years earlier, although profitable, did not bring him satisfaction. Nevertheless, the wholesale business was, if nothing else, a useful phase for him to find his place in the sun. He traveled a lot at that time, observing what was happening in the market from field to table and recognized that fresh pasta, which is easy to prepare and was a small niche at the time, had potential.
