Just about a hundred kilometers from Sarajevo, in the town of Zivinice, lies SU-AD, the only company in Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH) specializing in the production of fire trucks. This year, the company has recorded a 200% revenue growth. However, its rise is no surprise, as it wasn’t started merely as a business venture but was built on the foundations of vision, innovation, and a desire to transform the local industry. It all began in Germany, where its owner and director, Suad Beslic, earned a degree in mechanical engineering and worked as a designer of fire trucks at the renowned company “Lentner GmbH” in Hohenlinden, Upper Bavaria.
An emotional encounter with a worker’s mother
During his time at the company, Beslic achieved a significant feat by creating a unique design from eight different fire truck models, allowing for production in any part of the world. He enjoyed a good status, his career was at its peak, and he was financially secure, but the desire to one day return to his homeland never left him. This desire grew stronger after an encounter with a mother from Kalesija. When Beslic returned to BiH in search of new workers to take with him to Germany for training and work, the woman asked him, “If my son leaves, will his wife and my grandchild leave too?”
Deeply moved by the question, Beslic returned to Germany and informed his employer that he wanted to go back to BiH to start production there and stay with his people. This dream became a reality in 2017.
Initially, Beslic planned to start the business on his own, but he launched it together with his German employer.
The end of a partnership
Despite significant progress, the partnership came to an end. “It’s somewhat of a political issue,” Beslic explains, adding, “Here, we have people – politicians – who claim to be available 24/7 to help you. I’m originally from Kalesija, and I took the German investor to meet the mayor. Our goal was to employ around a hundred workers in two or three years. But the mayor was also a businessman, and I found myself in unfamiliar territory. People here work in strange ways,” says Beslic, adding that he couldn’t agree to pay workers only 400 BAM. He wanted them to be paid by German standards and have working conditions equal to those in Germany. After breaking off the partnership, he founded his own company, SU-AD, in 2019. The company name comes from Suad’s own name, which in Arabic means happiness. That sense of happiness would guide him through future challenges, including the COVID-19 pandemic, which disrupted the operations of many companies. When reflecting on that period, Beslic doesn’t forget to mention his workers, whose professionalism helped the company thrive and remain unique in the domestic market.
A night spent thinking about job conditions
“I completed my mechanical engineering studies in Munich and got the chance to intern at a company. I worked on my thesis there for six months, alongside nine other engineers – seven Germans, one Austrian, and me from BiH. While solving a problem on one vehicle, I gathered the courage to suggest a solution. After that, I began receiving more opportunities and tried to bring my own ideas to each task, and one day, the director asked if I would work there after graduation. I said yes, and the next morning I was called in for a meeting. I spent the whole night thinking about what to say – what my conditions would be, and so on. But the meeting lasted just a minute. The director said: ‘You’ll get this, this, and this.’ I received twice as much as I would have asked for,” Beslic recalls.
Even today, when he himself is an employer who gives others the opportunity for employment, he says that the most important thing for him is to see that someone wants to work, that he has a desire for work. At the moment, his company employs 18 workers.
This summer, like many other European countries, BiH faced wildfires, exposing the severe lack of resources for firefighting. Despite being the only domestic producer and a leading manufacturer in the region, Beslic’s company did not receive any inquiries from state institutions about producing fire trucks.
“I reached out on my own initiative, offering our services to both state and federal institutions. I even spoke with Mr. Niksic two weeks ago. He welcomed me politely, and we talked. I also tried to reach out to the Canton Sarajevo (CS). There’s a lot we’re missing – certainly fire trucks too. I’m here, ready to work…
Last year, the municipality of Zivinice bought a fire truck from Belgrade, not from us. If they had at least bought a better and cheaper truck, I wouldn’t have said anything. But they bought a more expensive one that isn’t even close to ours in quality. It was built on a Russian chassis, with no local servicing…
Is it normal for the director of the CS’s Civil Protection to buy a second-hand fire truck from Austria, a hundred thousand BAM more expensive, instead of buying from us? I don’t know how to explain it – people in certain positions just seem indifferent to what we do. And they shouldn’t be. Sadly, that’s the reality,” Beslic concludes, Forbes writes.
Photo: Forbes
E.Dz.
