[500 Best] Mihael Furjan (Pliva): We Expect Continued Positive Trends, Sustainable Business is Imperative

The best year in history lies behind Croatian entrepreneurs, but this year they have faced new challenges such as stagnation in the Eurozone and Germany entering a recession… Leaders of the largest companies claim that this does not affect revenue and has not delayed investment in new technologies, especially in artificial intelligence, as well as in environmental protection. As they navigate through these challenges, Mihael Furjan, CEO of Pliva. shared his insights.

– In the dynamic environment of the industry and disruptions in the energy market, Pliva is performing well and achieving positive results. In the upcoming period, the imperative will be on sustainable business, strengthening all segments of pharmaceutical production, and launching new products to the market. In this regard, this year we started producing electricity at our new solar power plant at our location in Savski Marof, built in collaboration with our partner E.ON Croatia.

This is the strongest solar power plant ever built in Croatia, which will be able to cover 30 percent of the energy needs at the mentioned location while simultaneously ensuring savings of approximately 20 percent. Additionally, in 2023, our production site in Zagreb plans to produce eight billion tablets for the first time in history, and considering that we produced almost three times less 15 years ago, we are satisfied with what has been achieved in this context.

We are proud to have employed our 3000th employee, and we have also been recognized with the Golden Key award for the largest exporter from Croatia, which is yet another confirmation of our business and the merits of all employees. The pharmaceutical industry has also strongly felt the consequences of the recent global crisis, which has led to the breaking of supply chains and significant energy instability.

For years, there has been pressure on prices that are continuously decreasing, with some medications seeing prices drop by more than 50 percent over the last decade, which affects the continuous reduction in the number of pharmaceutical raw material manufacturers. The pharmaceutical industry primarily expects a lot from the new European strategy that encourages innovation and aims to strengthen production, which has moved to the Far East in some segments over the past decades, within EU countries. At the same time, new risks are emerging, such as the recent proposal from the European Council, which anticipates a drastic increase in regulatory costs, in some segments by 200 percent, which would further negatively impact the sustainability of especially generic drugs that represent more than two-thirds of all therapies in Croatia and the EU.

We continue to ensure stable exports, and the first half of the year was at the level of 2022, with the most important export markets being the USA, as well as other European markets such as the Netherlands, Switzerland, Germany, and Poland. We expect continued positive trends and believe that sales in 2023 will be at the level of last year, although revenues show a strong impact from rising production costs and increasing employee wages.