DOK-ING

DOK-ING is the reason Croatia has a globally significant robotics manufacturer. Vjekoslav Majetic founded it in Zagreb in 1991, in a country about to be left with one of the worst landmine problems in Europe, with the stated aim of building remote controlled machines so that people would not have to work in dangerous places themselves. The first EOD robot came in 1995, developed with the Croatian Ministry of the Interior. The MV-1 mini flail started clearing Croatian ground in 1997, and the improved MV-4 went to the Croatian Ministry of Defence in 2000 and became the company's best seller.

Mine clearance is still the core. The MV-4 Scorpion is the light flail machine, the MV-10 Bison is the heavy one, and the MV-2 Honey Badger, introduced in 2018, sits between them. DOK-ING claims its machines make up about 80 percent of the world's robotic mine clearing fleet, with more than 500 systems delivered into over 40 countries and users spanning armed forces, government agencies, humanitarian demining organisations and commercial clearance contractors. A 2004 United States Army contract was the point at which the company stopped being a regional supplier.

The same heavy remote platform has been pushed into other roles. The MVF-5 Tusk is a multi-mission emergency response machine that can drive into a fire and put water or foam onto it at ranges up to 60 metres, and it has been used on industrial fires in Croatia and on wildfires and unexploded ordnance ground in Germany. The MV-3 Hystrix, launched in 2023, is a counter-terrorism robot. The MVC8 Komodo, first shown in 2021, is a modular heavy duty hybrid platform carrying more than 8.5 tonnes of payload, and it is the machine on which the Rheinmetall relationship is built. CBRNe work runs across several of these platforms.

Underground mining has been a separate business since 2003, when DOK-ING won an XLP dozer contract from Anglo American Platinum and set up DOK-ING South Africa. A 2009 contract for electrical underground mining equipment extended that line, and low profile electric machines for narrow reef mining remain part of the range. The company has also produced electric vehicles at various points in its history. Manufacturing capacity was expanded with a plant at Slunj in 2006, and alongside the hardware DOK-ING sells mine action services, contract research and development, spare parts, maintenance, supervision, operator training and life cycle extension programmes. More than 100 national and international awards have gone to the machines over the years, which for a company of this size says something about how unusual the engineering is.

Ownership changed in 2026. Rheinmetall and DOK-ING had already formed a joint venture in 2024 for unmanned military vehicles. The German group signed an agreement in Zagreb on 4 March 2026 to buy a majority stake, and the transaction closed on 1 July 2026, with Rheinmetall taking 51 percent and Majetic retaining 49 percent. The purchase price was not disclosed. The company is being renamed Rheinmetall Unmanned Vehicles d.o.o. while continuing to operate from Zagreb, with production also localised in Ukraine. It employed around 230 people and reported roughly 70.6 million euros of revenue in 2024.