From a machine in the garage to eleven types of roofing

The company began in 1998, when Bojan Petrovič, aged twenty-five, opened Krovstvo Petrovič, Bojan Petrovič s.p., and laid the foundations of a successful company. Its main activity was installing roofing and other sheet-metal work.

Hard work paid off: Petrovič soon hired his first colleagues and invested in a machine for bending sheet metal, which he set up in the family garage. That machine, recalls his son Blaž Petrovič, who leads the company together with his parents, was the competitive advantage that let the company grow.

In 2005 the company ran out of space and moved to Kidričevo, where it still works today. In 2006 it invested in its first machine for sheet-metal roofing and presented its first roofing in the form of a roof tile; experience from installations gave the knowledge to develop roofing known today under the Petrovič brand.

Over the years customers’ trust allowed investment in new machines; at the time the latest production lines made eleven different types of roofing.

In 2013 the company added light galvanised structural profiles, at first to offer smaller prefabricated garages, machine sheds and warehouses. It bought its first machine for galvanised profiles, set up a complete production line for storage, business and production halls and hired its first designer; in 2020 it employed four designers and worked with about ten installation teams.

Year by year it added production space until it had built over the whole site, growing from a small roofing business into the largest Slovenian manufacturer of sheet-metal roofing.

Most Petrovič roofing and sheet-metal products are sold through more than 50 points of sale across Slovenia, from specialised roofing stores such as Marex and Obenauf to building stores such as Merkur and Topdom. The company had made roofing for more than 90,000 buildings in Slovenia, Croatia and Austria and erected more than a hundred production and storage halls.

One of the larger buildings was a warehouse of more than 1,000 m², for which Petrovič provided advice, design, production and erection; on business buildings its roofing covered more than 5,000 m².

The team numbered just under 30 people, joined in summer by local students who do their school practice with the company during the year. The average age was 36, and in 2020 the company received the Family-Friendly Company certificate.

The most distinctive roofing is the newest, LUX: a modern profile whose dense pattern makes it very strong, and the first Petrovič roofing that can be ordered in short pieces packed on a pallet. It is the favourite of a business customer in Canada, to whom several shipping containers had already been sent.

The company supports local associations, events and humanitarian campaigns; in 2019 it dropped New Year business gifts, gave 5,000 euros to local associations and helped young Kris with a donation, and it takes part in the charity programme Delovna akcija.

Its own solar power plant produces electricity for its needs and feeds 60 percent of the energy produced into the grid; digitalisation saved 100,000 sheets of paper in 2020 alone.

Materials improve over the years, and customers can now get a 30-year warranty. Even small hail can break a classic roof tile, while sheet-metal roofing withstands extreme weather and does not let water in even in the heaviest hail.

Once roofing that imitated traditional tiles was popular and roofs were mostly brown; today straight, modern lines win and dark grey and black dominate.

The future lies in digitalisation and automation: barcodes in the warehouse and paperless business processes. The documents for a new business and warehouse centre were being completed: more than 1,500 m² of business space for the largest roofing centre in Slovenia, and storage and production space of more than 5,000 m².

Three milestones: 2006, roofing production at the new location; 2013, prefabricated buildings of galvanised profiles made to measure; 2020, a business web shop, digitalisation and the most advanced bending centre in Slovenia. Products are made to CE standards, with the Slovenian Quality and EXC2 certificates.