Vienna, 18 May (STA) - Lumar, a maker of energy efficient and passive prefabricated houses, presented in Vienna on Monday its first sample house for the Austrian market. The Maribor-based family company invested half a million euros in the project.

The house, located in Austria's biggest centre of sample houses, the Blue Lagoon, is expected to bring the company closer to Austrian and German customers, according to CEO Marko Lukić.

Based on the response so far, the company, which has had a subsidiary in Austria since last year, plans sell about ten sales high-end houses this years. In the first four months of the year alone, contracts worth EUR 3m were signed, according to Lukić.

Economy Minister Zdravko Počivalšek, who attended today's event, said he was happy to see Lumar penetrating the Austrian market, "the heart of the wood industry". He added that the Lumar house was different and technologically more advanced than anything this market had seen so far.

"This is important for Slovenia too, as we're trying to revive our wood-processing industry, which has nearly hit the rock bottom in the last decades," the minister said.

He noted that Austria was the third biggest Slovenian trade partner, after Germany and Italy, and the most important investor in the country.

The Blue Lagoon in Vienna boasts about a hundred exhibitors and gets about 150,000 visitors annually.

Lumar, which increased its exports from just over 10% in 2011 to almost 45% in 2014, left the Austrian Green Building Group last year and founded the subsidiary Lumar Haus in the country.

The company, employing 60 people, generated EUR 11.18m in revenue in 2014, up 13% from the year before, while profit was up by almost a third. This year, profit is expected to stay level, only to rise again in 2016.

The company's biggest market outside Slovenia is Italy, while it is also looking for new business opportunities in Switzerland and Austria.

Lumar built the Slovenian pavilion at the Milan Expo 2015, an elaborate building made mostly of wood and glass.