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businesses to go further faster in their efforts to be more sustainable Multidisciplinary professional services organization Mertik family from Brezovica pri Ljubljani has lived and breathed their family business Now one of the largest EMS providers of printed circuit board (PCB) assemblies in Slovenia the company began as Ignac Mertik’s side business in the 1980s he passed the reigns to his daughter Sonja who has followed in his  footsteps with great success Today the family enterprise employs 50 people and last year they made €7 million in revenue with €1.5 million profit.Their plans which include employing around 200 additional people in  the next 10 years considering the company’s dynamic revenue growth of over 250% in the past five years to a family with a long farming and winegrowing tradition “My great-grandfathers were  winegrowers and my father continued that tradition so that we became one of the largest winegrowers in that part of Slovenia I can say at entrepreneurship has always been in my family DNA,” recalls Ignac Ignac began building his entrepreneurial future but he  had already laid foundations elsewhere he first worked and gained experience at the Elma company in Ljubljana and in the early eighties he accepted an invitation to work for IMP Avtomatika first as a technologist and later in the sales department he finally decided to pave his own way and founded a small electrical engineering workshop for which they made central heating  regulators and sensors The break-up of Yugoslavia was a difficult period for  many enterprises and MI Elektronika had to let several employees go when they began manufacturing their  own products MI Elektronika is one of the largest companies offering PCB assembly  services in Slovenia While these represent their main product line they also provide final mounting of the assemblies manufacture cables and develop and produce their own EMI filters Some years ago they also began  developing and manufacturing LED lights MI Elektronika provides components for PCB assemblies to the most discerning clients in the fields of medicine They buy raw materials on the international markets but all their knowledge comes from Slovenia as Ignac points out:  “Our greatest advantage comes from our 32 engineers who integrate their  knowledge into the assemblies we produce international market as Slovenian know-how The most challenging products  are assemblies for the medical industry which are very technologically- demanding and usually only ordered in small quantities.” The components made by MI Elektronika are also used in the fields of stomatology and facial  care which increasingly use laser-based technologies MI Elektronika directly exports around 8% of its production but through their clients as much as 90% of their products are ultimately employed  abroad In addition to several Slovenian awards and recognitions — the 2014 Central Slovenian Gazela Award the 2018 Delo Business Star Award and 2019 Bronze Slovenian Gazela Award — they also received the “Creators  of the century” award from Perspective the International Economic Forum (IEF) with 1178 members from nine southeastern and northern  European  countries This award put MI Elektronika among the 300 most promising companies from this region Buyers who were very restrained at the start of the crisis have returned and we are back to working at full strength for 10 hours per day would enter the family business and today they both work in the company “I raised my  children with an entrepreneurial spirit,” points out Ignac write down their hours and they got paid,” he explains “This is how my sister and I bought our first Poni  bicycle,” recalls Sonja Today Sonja’s son Alen also works part-time at the company His was the one  voice to convince Ignac that the company should stay in the family “I once got a tempting offer to sell the company But when my grandson reminded me I had promised him that he too could work in the family company she gained significant experience in the Ljubljana sales department of  multinational company “I gained a lot of experience related to working with  people and I saw how things work in northern Europe where everything is very organized,” she explains Was she afraid to put on her father’s shoes “He still makes the important decisions,” is her answer Ignac says he stays  out of the day-to-day operation of the company but as its Authorized Representative he still helps with the finances and takes care of strategic projects is a chemical engineer who controls the company’s sorting and storage of materials What business results can MI Elektronika expect in 2020 after the coronavirus pandemic has altered almost all aspects of the economy results will not be much worse than last year He is very happy that the mood in the company is returning to its pre-pandemic optimism “Buyers who were very restrained at the start of  the crisis have returned and we are back to working at full strength for 10 hours per day,” he explains They have also decided to put more energy into maintaining relationships with existing clients and finding new ones “During the pandemic we realized that we needed to expand our client pool which is why we gave new powers to our marketing department,” adds Sonja Both also point out that the coronavirus showed them how important it is to react quickly One of the strategic projects MI Elektronika started even before the coronavirus pandemic is the construction of a new state-of-the art plant  for PCB assemblies in Logatec They plan to move their existing production  to the new plant with the aim of having 250 employees by the end of the decade “Our current building in Brezovica became too small,” says Ignac.“A small company with a few dozen employees has to fight really hard to get business but as a company with several manufacturing lines Our aim is to have 15 manufacturing lines,” he says The new location will also expand their storage capacities At MI Elektronika they know that the knowledge of their employees is the key to their added value They also firmly believe that employees deserve to  be rewarded as this is the only way to get what you want from them Only fair payment deserves to be rewarded  with fair work,” points out Ignac who is very proud that hardly anyone wants to leaves their company At least as important as fair payment is also education and the systematic training of younger generations MI Elektronika offers internships for students of faculties and high schools in Ljubljana They keep the best students and offer them employment They realize that young knowledge “makes the world go round” which is why they regularly collaborate with young researchers from the Technology Park Ljubljana MI Elektronika in a nutshell: knowledge and development of the member firms of Ernst & Young Global Limited