Small Garden Greenhouses Have Become a Big Hit in the Market

Although the company Gis Impro from Vrbovec specializes in the production and assembly of greenhouses for large producers, no one in the company expected that during the pandemic, the part of the business they only dealt with incidentally would explode: small garden greenhouses. Branko Đurinić, the owner of the company where he currently works as a procurator, says that since the beginning of the pandemic, they have recorded 20-30 inquiries daily, and they would sell about 30 monthly.

– However, households have never been our main customers, nor is the small garden greenhouse our main product. We specialize in the production and assembly of large greenhouses, from 5,000 square meters and up. Almost all larger greenhouses in Croatia have originated from our facility, and besides greenhouses, we also offer a complete service for establishing hydroponic production that does not involve soil but inert substrates, irrigation, fertilization, automation, and similar to ensure the final product is of high quality – emphasizes Đurinić, who has been at the helm of the company for 30 years.

And how it all started is quite an incredible story. In the 1980s, Đurinić worked for the company Konstruktor from Križevci, from where he is originally, which received the job of building a greenhouse on the island of Vis for a palm nursery, the oldest nursery in Europe founded by none other than Maria Theresa. Today, that nursery no longer exists, but it was an important project at that time for that closed and underdeveloped island.

As he established good connections with the company from which the greenhouse was procured on that project, the company sent him to Italy for specialization not only to gain knowledge about greenhouse production. He thought he would stay for a year, but plans changed very quickly. The owner of the company decided to keep him because he proved to be a very good worker, so he decided to continue his life in Italy, in Verona, where his entire family moved.

– After four years, I progressed so much that I became too expensive for my employer in Italy, who told me that it was better for both him and me to open my own company in that country with the knowledge and experience I had at that time, so I listened to him. I continued to work for my former employer, but also for other clients, so I earned more and the business started to go quite well – recalls Đurinić.

Opening a company in that country at that time did not seem particularly difficult and complicated; his former employer helped him with some money for the initial capital, Branko bought an apartment where he registered the company, and he quickly started working all over Italy. At that time, he would drive over 150,000 kilometers a year across Italy while visiting construction sites where his greenhouses were being built. However, his heart was pulling him home, even though war had already broken out in Croatia. In 1992, he decided to open a company in Croatia as well.

– In fact, it happened that we got a client from Croatia who heard about our greenhouses and ordered his project from us, and when I heard that, I immediately contacted that client, and as soon as the assembly was agreed upon, I came to the site and helped him build everything from the ground up. And then I realized that if I wanted to work here, I had to have a company here, so we opened a branch, and we also moved back to Croatia from Italy – recalls Đurinić, who has since traveled the route Verona – Zagreb multiple times a week.

Initially, the business in Croatia was not so serious, so he continued to work more and more often in Italy, but over the years he gained a reputation in his homeland and a certain number of satisfied clients who brought him new jobs. It picked up before the turn of the millennium, so they bought land in Vrbovec and decided to start serious production in our Beautiful Homeland. He did not shut down the company in Italy until 2013, when Croatia joined the European Union, but that market is still very, very important to him today.

– Gis Impro today works on a good part of projects abroad, of course, mostly in Italy because we have been present there for years, but we have also managed to break into the French market. With some partners, we are also entering other markets, but we mainly go independently to those two. Honestly, we would all be happy in the company to work more in Croatia, but there simply are not enough projects for us here, there are not enough agricultural production projects, at least not to the extent we would like – states Đurinić. The company’s director, Vesna Roščak, says she does not want the impression to be created that they do not work in Croatia; they certainly do, and last year they had a major project in Split for the city company Parks and Plantations.

– All greenhouses of Zagreb’s Zrinjevac are also ‘Made in Vrbovec’. We have also worked for Parks from Varaždin, for the University of Dubrovnik, Croatian Forests, the Institute for Agriculture in Osijek. Almost all domestic private, large agricultural investors and family farms have our greenhouses. In Croatia, Gis Impro has covered over 20 hectares of agricultural land with its most modern greenhouses in recent years, but it would be good if there were more of them, if there were more tenders for fruit and vegetable production, especially now in the circumstances we find ourselves in and when we should be working on our own self-sufficiency – said Roščak.

Đurinić agrees, believing that agriculture is quite neglected here. EU funds are not sufficiently utilized, there are not enough tenders, and it particularly saddens him when he sees what projects the company is working on in other countries and what support institutions and the state provide to foreign farmers who order greenhouses from Vrbovec. He believes that, given the experiences with agricultural investors abroad, domestic public institutions should work more and better for such investors, rather than, as is currently the case, against them. He supported this with the fact that Gis Impro worked on about 20 projects that never came to fruition because they did not receive support from institutions, which is common and very normal in other countries.

– Slovenia, for example, helps investors, and the Slovenian agricultural agency does everything to ensure that investments are realized. They are definitely not held back just because they can, and you can freely write that – emphasized Đurinić.

You can read more about this interesting entrepreneur in the current issue of the weekly Lider, in printed and digital form.