A nine-month gap between a fire and a new factory. In Vinica, the company Vinchini - part of the family-owned MakProgres - has opened a new plant worth 8.5 million euros, exactly nine months after a fire damaged part of its previous capacity last September. Instead of waiting and mourning, the firm built a new factory in six months, with domestic construction companies.

The numbers behind the opening sound good on paper: 40 new jobs right away, with a plan for another 40 next year. Two modern lines for producing wafers and similar products, aimed at the domestic market and at over 60 foreign markets. The investment, the company says, will boost production capacity by around 30 percent.

Prime Minister Hristijan Mickoski attended the opening too, alongside the head of the chamber of commerce and the mayor of Vinica. A prime minister at a factory opening is an almost obligatory scene here - a good photo, good news for the day. But unlike many such events, here there's actually something tangible behind the photo: a real company, with 600 employees across five plants, operating since 1990, investing its own money, not state subsidies.

And that's exactly the difference worth pointing out. Vinica is not a big city, and every job there weighs more than in Skopje. When a domestic company, after a fire, doesn't ask for help but builds bigger than before and exports to 60 markets - that's a story Macedonia rarely tells about itself, and should tell more often. The only question is whether politics will let an economy like this be news in its own right, without needing a prime minister on the ribbon to get noticed.