One of Europe's top pallet manufacturers operates in Serbia - To-Ma to open factory in Irig in December 2012

The company To-Ma will open a factory for producing pallets in the industrial zone in Irig on 1 December 2012. Production and storage facilities will be situated within a 3,000 sqm complex on a 40,000 sqm land, and this factory will be producing briquettes in addition to pallets.

The company plans to produce about 1,500 Euro-pallets a day and 2,000 tonnes of briquettes a year at the factory in Irig.

Goran Nenadovic, director of To-Ma, says to eKapija that the plan is to export 80-85 percent of goods produced at the new factory.

- We already operate in nine countries and market our goods in Austria, Italy, Slovenia, Hungary, Germany, Czech Republic and Belgium. Our production capacity is the third largest in Europe, right behind those of German companies that are backed by their government, while we receive no assistance from the state. We even have difficulty in providing raw materials, although we pay for them in advance and export most of the goods produced - says our interlocutor.

To-Ma was founded in 1999 in Vienna as a company with two employees, while today it employs over 300 workers. The company currently produces seven million wooden pallets a year at its factories in Zemun and Busovaca, Bosnia-Herzegovina.

- By opening a branch office in Serbia in 2005, we started off very modestly and experienced many difficulties. Since 2007, the number of employees has grown from 3 to 75. With a realistic plan and the support from founder Tomislav Matic, the company has managed to overcome the global economic crisis, start production in difficult moments and not give up. We now already consider conquering new markets - says Nenadovic, who assumed the position of director in 2007.

Nenadovic points out that To-Ma is a foreign investor, stressing that "our politicians did not have an ear or time to provide support to this company, which will hire 60-70 workers in Irig by the New Year."

- We must underline that the only support and assistance we've received came from the management of the Irig municipality and Mayor Vladimir Petrovic.

To-Ma holds a certificate of the European pallet pool for both production and repair of pallets in line with the standard UIC-435-2.

- Our strategic product is EPAL EUR pallet, which is standard and the reason why we are under inspection by Germany's SGS every week. These pallets are in use all around the world. We are also engaged in the production of pallets of all dimensions, and we are capable of meeting all the requests of our clients.

Our interlocutor adds that they always have enough goods in stock to satisfy a minimum of 15 percent of every client's annual needs for wooden packaging, stressing that they do deliveries 24 hours a day.

People at To-Ma are now focused on the commissioning of the factory in Serbia, while after that, in few years, depending on the demand for goods in the European market, they also plan to boost production capacity. However, they have not decided yet where to do that.

M.K.