How Costa Rica Attracts High-Tech Investment Through Procomer, with CEO Laura López

Philip Spagnoli Stoten (0:08)

I'm at the inauguration of the second Zollner facility here in Costa Rica. I'm joined by Laura López from Procomer. Tell me a bit about Procomer. Procomer is an organization that supports foreign companies.

Laura López (0:21)

We support exporters and investment. So basically, we are promoting Costa Rica all around the world, just not to take products from Costa Rica to the world, to make sure that companies like Zollner come to Costa Rica, invest and grow.

Philip Spagnoli Stoten (0:33)

Yeah. They were the first here on this industrial estate, which is packed now. It's packed and building is going on and it's growing. That must be pretty satisfying and exciting for you.

Laura López (0:43)

Well, Costa Rica has been growing a lot in medical devices, in electronics, in semiconductors. So Zollner is part of this great ecosystem right now in our country.

Philip Spagnoli Stoten (0:53)

Yeah. The ecosystem side of it is really important, building a supply chain around companies like this. Building suppliers, building different opportunities for them. And as you mentioned, maybe some OEM brands that are coming in that will be their customers.

Is that something that the government here has been really focused on?

Laura López (1:12)

Yeah. We're promoting a lot of this ecosystem from scaling human talent, from having more capabilities, from the right suppliers. So we're trying to build the right ecosystem for the companies to make sure that they feel at home in Costa Rica.

Philip Spagnoli Stoten (1:27)

Yeah. And the talent question is really always important in the electronic manufacturing space. The right talent and being able to train that talent.

It seems around here that there is the right talent coming out. But Zollner have been able to build relationships with academia that really add value. Is that something that you're able to support and help them with?

Laura López (1:47)

Yeah.

We are always thinking about our talent as our main asset. We're investing all the time to keep people training, to get people in the right course of the training programs. From Procomer, we're building different incentives to make sure that we can co-finance with the companies the training programs. We have the right academia, we have the right universities, the right technical institutions, but also we can co-finance with the companies the training programs.

Philip Spagnoli Stoten (2:19)

Yeah. You have the right skills and the specific skills for those.

That's really exciting. It's been a really exciting 11 years for Zollner here, but it's been an interesting 11 years globally and for Costa Rica. Tell me how different is it now to when it was when the first site was built here, and what you expect for the coming 10 years?

Laura López (2:40)

In the past decade, we have grown exports four times. Forex. Yeah, and sophistication Forex too.

Philip Spagnoli Stoten (2:49)

Wow.

Laura López (2:49)

So that speaks loudly of what we're doing in Costa Rica.

Philip Spagnoli Stoten (2:53)

Yeah, it's a huge difference, isn't it? Thank you so much for being here. Thank you for your time.