The Alpha and Omega of Sardina from Postira: The Suddenly Deceased Mislav Bezmalinović Was a Legendary Water Polo Player and an Extremely Successful Entrepreneur

The news of the sudden death of Mislav Bezmalinović (58) shocked Croatian sports, especially water polo. The heart of the first captain of the Croatian water polo team, a winner of the brightest medals with the former state team and his Split club Jadran, has failed. However, few media outlets remembered that he was also an extremely successful entrepreneur.

Bezmalinović had been on the board of the Postira Sardina for over 20 years, leading the company for more than a decade, and was the largest co-owner with a 47.5 percent stake. He transformed Sardina into the strongest company on Brač, which is also the largest producer on all Croatian islands. Only one retail chain (Trgovina Krk), one construction company (GP Krk), one carrier (Autotrans), and three tourism companies (Imperial Riviera, Jadranka Turizam, and Sunčani Hvar) achieved higher revenues than Sardina’s record €34 million in 2023.

In the last 15 years, Sardina has grown primarily by insisting on exports. Revenues in the domestic market have never exceeded €10 million per year, while exports have tripled, now accounting for about 70 percent of revenues.

Another of Bezmalinović’s business principles was diversifying production, which he discussed in one of his last appearances for Bloomberg Adria.

– It is very important that we are diversified because there are significant fluctuations in fishing on an annual basis, which includes large price changes, for example, tuna in the Japanese market where fluctuations can be from 30 to 40 percent year to year – he explained, adding that Sardina is the only company that also works on tuna farming for the Japanese market and sea bream and sea bass for Europe, canned fish production, and they also own a fleet of fishing vessels. As he emphasized, such diversity allows Sardina to reduce production in one segment and increase it in another when it becomes apparent that a particular year will be worse in some segment.

One of the key problems he faced, like every industrial facility on the Adriatic, was the coexistence of industry and tourism. He spoke about this at a round table on the sustainability of industrial development in Split in the fall of 2022:

– Although in 2013, thanks to the construction of a new facility, we met all the necessary standards regarding unpleasant odors during fish processing and wastewater, we invested an additional two million euros due to the fact that our fellow citizens live off tourism to completely eliminate that impact on the environment – said Mislav Bezmalinović at that time.