Tik generated EUR 6.5 million in sales revenue last year, 6% more than the year before and 28% more than five years ago, with exports accounting for 86% of the revenue, shows the company's report for 2019, filed with the AJPES agency for public legal records.

The positive drive continues. "At these 'odd times' we're proud to say our performance in the first half of the year trumped the expectations," the company's CEO Petra Borovinšek said, adding that she expected better-than expected results for the whole year.

Tik Kobarid was founded in 1951 as a manufacturer of sewing machine needles. A few years later, it started making hypodermic needles and by the late 1970s in had begun to expand production to several other disposable medical devices and tools.

The company went through a difficult patch after the breakup of the former Yugoslavia, its traditional market. In late 1997 it was acquired by the Cerkno-based company Certa, now Larix Invest, whose majority ownership has since passed to Postojnska Jama, the company owned by Marjan Batagelj which operates the Postojna Cave and several other tourism assets.

Tik has recently launched a new clean room to expand cleanroom production capacity to more than 40% of the output or a total of 1,500 square meters. Also this month, an additional catheter wetting unit has been launched to wrap up a two-year investment cycle in the urology line valued at EUR 2 million.

The company, which employs 159 people, phased out production of non-medical productions completely by March 2019 to focus solely on disposable medical devices. Its clients are mainly medical equipment distributors from Europe, as well as those from Turkey and the Balkans. Catheters represent 76% of the sales revenue.