Kapela Distilling Company’s director/co-founder Neven Vorkapic signed today a 5-year lease deal for our new production facility.
The facility is housed in the Torpedo Production Park, historically known as “Hall 14” of the legendary Torpedo factory, now newly refurbished and managed by Rijeka Development Agency PORIN. CEO of PORIN, Dario Zoric, handed us the keys to the new facility and wished us good luck in our future work.
This is such a wonderful news for us because it means we are getting closer to the date when we will open our doors and put our spirits on the market. We are very excited about this deal and thankful to the City of Rijeka for putting their trust and belief in our potential ever since our startup days within Rijeka start-up incubator.
Torpedo Production Park is a co-working space which will be a home to new local startup companies. Besides the workshop there are many other benefits at the Torpedo Production Park, such as free internet connection, free counseling with PORIN’s business advisors and not to forget, a conference hall and office spaces at our disposal. We are very excited to be a part of this new business community and looking forward to collaborating with our colleagues.
We will be in the workshop no. 10 and we hope that you will visit us when we start production.
In 1874, the first torpedo factory in the world began to operate at the same location under the name of Silurificio Whitehead, Torpedo Fabrik von Robert Whitehead, and later Robert Whitehead & Co. According to sources, besides Whitehead and his associates, the idea for the invention of the torpedo came from Ivan Luppis. According to his idea, they started designing a weapon for destroying enemy ships before they could approach the coast. Thus, the initial conceptual application of this weapon was to protect the shore from ships and, hence, the name salvacoste, freely translated as saviour of the coast or that which saves the coast. The technical realization of Luppis’s idea resulted in many patents and innovations and ultimately in the creation of a weapon of great application and broad purpose – the torpedo. In this way, Rijeka found its place at the top of the global industrial innovation and production of the time.
You can read more about Torpedo factory history on Rijeka Heritage website, from where this section of the article is also taken from.