Companies have experienced how fragile, culturally complicated, and expensive offshore operations can be in the last two years. For this reason, US-based businesses have started to consider the Latin American region as a potential place to expand or relocate their operations. However, the reasons vary; the location, accessibility, time zone, and low cost offered by nearshoring represent a great opportunity.
Costa Rica, located close to the United States and Canada, has a similar time zone to the rest of the western hemisphere, facilitating global operations. This proximity from our country to businesses in North America, allows companies to simplify their operations and reduce their logistical costs, compared to other parts of Latin America or Asia.
Becoming outsourcing and shared services destination by generating the ideal conditions for business, is challenging, but Costa Rica has quickly captured the attention of multinational companies from the tech and service industry, as for life sciences and manufacturing activities.
Furthermore, the country’s connectivity to the rest of the world through its international airport and maritime ports to the Pacific Ocean and the Caribbean, makes it an excellent destination for nearshore operations. This is positively complemented with its political and democratic stability, supported by one of the most open market-oriented economies in the world, and having highly qualified human talent who is used to conducting business with foreign companies. In recent years, Costa Ricans have stood out in Latin America for their language skills, with companies now hiring them to offer shared services in languages like Spanish, English, Portuguese, French, German, and Mandarin.
Costa Rica’s free zone regime. Benefits for direct foreign investments looking to relocate here include attractive operating conditions such as exonerations and duty-free services. Additionally, the country recently joined the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), which will boost its economy and development to improve, through the organization´s mentoring.
Why AFZ?
As a business park, we have a strategic location in Costa Rica, being established between the three most populated provinces, where the most amount of qualified and English proficient human talent convene.
AFZ offers plug-and-play office solutions to enable the business continuity of arriving operations with innovative and modern spaces. Now, the business park is known for being a shared services cluster in the region thanks to Fortune 500 companies hosted at the facilities, the quality of its employees, and its trajectory in the area.
AFZ keeps improving its current amenities and developing new projects so that incoming nearshore operations find the ideal working areas to focus on the important aspects of their businesses while enjoying the advantages that the facilities offer.
Despite the current emergency, the world lives in with the COVID-19 pandemic, both from a social and economic point of view, AFZ has kept its operations’ stability and has ensured business continuity to the companies located at the park. Far from being stopped by the situation, projects and renovations based on sustainability and mobility efficiency have continued on our campus.
Recently, AFZ got certified with a COVID-19 Safety Compliant seal by the Costa Rican Health Council, demonstrating that proper management of sanitary safety is taken seriously by our company.
