European company opens headquarters in South American country

Colombia. The Spanish firm Hitecsa, dedicated to the manufacture of air conditioning equipment for the industrial and service segments (hotels, shopping centers and offices) will establish its operations center in the free zone of the coffee axis. Juan Carlos Peñuela Gallego, current manager of the company for Colombia, Ecuador, Peru and Chile, said that the company's objective when settling in that country is to open up to the South American market and know the movement of the product in the region. "In a first phase we will dedicate ourselves exclusively to the commercial part, for which we will begin to bring finished products, due to the initial difficulty of carrying out the maquila and developing manufacturing in the region," said Peñuela. Likewise, he explained that later he hopes to do technical tests at that headquarters and in the medium term, about five years, carry out a production line. "The idea is that, despite having all the accompaniment from Barcelona, we have our own group of engineers and technicians destined to the development of the products, even to the training of labor," he said. The executive considered that by 2012 the value of sales in the national territory will be between US $ 400,000 and US $ 600,000.