Dragan, we are celebrating two anniversaries at the same time: Xella Serbia turns 20, and you have been here for 20 years, too. How did it all start?

Xella hired me in 2004 when they took over the first plant in Serbia. At that time, the Xella Group was expanding by buying companies and plants in Eastern Europe. One of them was the Kolubara plant here in Serbia, which was built in the 1980s. So it needed a whole modernization program to be able to produce Ytong quality products there.

What other changes have you experienced besides the technical upgrades?

The company also needed to change from a pure channel focus to a customer focus. We had to learn how to support our clients in terms of the technical features and characteristics of our products and solutions. These were big changes - but I was grateful to be part of that learning process. If I'd come to an already well-established processes, it would have probably taken me a lot longer to understand what was going on.

What makes working at Xella special for you?

What has been amazing for me is that every 2 or 3 years I have been given additional responsibilities within Xella. I started as CFO for Xella Serbia in 2005 and there was a lot of work to integrate this plant in Serbia. In 2007, I started working on the acquisition of the Tuzla plant in Bosnia and Herzegovina, as I had done before in Serbia. Few years after this I was appointed as CEO of Alpe-Adria cluster and then SEE market area. This gave me the opportunity to work in the multicultural and multinational environment - which I was used to.

What do you mean by that?

Before I came to Xella, I worked for eight years for Energo, a company operating in East Africa - Uganda, Kenya, Tanzania and Ethiopia. We did civil engineering projects. We built dams, roads, and we spoke English all the time. When I came back to Serbia, at first I thought, well, I'll work in my home country again. But it turned out that I was part of the transformation of Xella from an almost purely German company to an international one - I was able to work in many countries again. I feel comfortable in this multinational environment - I can express myself and contribute to my personal growth and the growth of the company.

What brought you to East Africa?

To be honest, I didn't make that decision. My previous company's plan was to send me to Peru, where most of their projects were located. I even learned Spanish - but when I was ready to leave, things changed.

I was supposed to cover for a colleague for six months - and it turned out to be eight years. I did my best to find out what our small team there could do, and they wanted me to stay. After two years, I brought my wife to East Africa and our two children were born there, a daughter and a son.

Why did you come back to Serbia?

It was a wonderful experience, a beautiful region, and generally a good place to live. We still keep in touch with good friends there. We can't describe how enriched we were, but we still like our decision to continue here in Europe. Back then, our daughter was about to start school - my wife and I felt we needed a change after eight years on another continent. We haven't regretted it.

What do you do when you're not working?

My main exercise is swimming. I go three times a week and swim three kilometers in different styles. I used to do it in high school to compete in some tournaments. Now I have other reasons for doing it - the sound of the water and breathing underwater gives me relaxation and almost makes me meditate. And it also keeps me in shape.

Another exercise is walking my dogs with my wife almost every day. Now that my daughter is a veterinarian, we have a bit of a zoo at home - four dogs, three cats and a horse.