Posting net sales of EUR 584,000 for 2018, up over a quarter on the year before, the company expects annual revenue to rise by about 30% to roughly EUR 900,000 this year, co-founder Anita Lozar told the STA. Virtually the entire profit is reinvested.

The company sells its range of craft beers in Slovenia and Italy. This summer it has decided to enter the Croatian and Danish markets.

Starting off with a single product, a pale ale, Pelicon currently offers nine types of beer and has the capacity to produce up to 250,000 litres of the hoppy beverage a year. It has also branched out from beer to produce a craft gin and a "hoppy tonic" with real quinine.

"Over these six years we've grown, seen where our shortcomings are and slowly started to tackle them. We've slowly improved our product portfolio and started bottling beer. We currently sell half the beer bottled and half on tap in pubs, which we had not been doing before," Lozar said,

About a year ago the brewery also started to work with retailers. According to Lozar, this means having to increase output, which again required production adjustments. "But these are sweet problems," she said.