WEBVTT
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00:00:01.040Hello, I'm Philip Stowton.
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00:00:04.719I'm here in Costa Rica with Marcus Aschenbreno.
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00:00:12.640Marcus, great to see you, great to speak to you, and an absolute delight to be back here after 11 and a half years ago here before.
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00:00:13.119Yeah.
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00:00:22.079When I think of that decade, Zolna's really grown from being not just a European manufacturer to a but being a global presence.
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00:00:29.679When before we dive into what's going on here, when you think of where you position manufacturing globally, what guides you?
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00:00:31.440What's the most important things?
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00:00:33.920Because you've opened a lot of new locations.
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00:00:35.039That's right, Phil.
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00:00:37.840We opened a lot of locations over the last couple of years.
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00:00:41.359Um but you know, basically in EMS it's always the same.
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00:00:43.439It's the voice of the customer, you know, you have to listen.
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00:00:49.119You have first to ask, then you have to listen to the customer saying, hey, what's the needs that you have now?
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00:00:54.479And in the next coming years, look at the political situation, you know, because that changed also a lot.
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00:01:05.599And uh it's obvious that uh the regionalization point is moving on, so you have to manufacture local for the region, and uh, this is exactly why we expanded in that direction.
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00:01:28.799So we uh we are making uh made an acquisition here on the west coast uh or on uh in the US on the East Coast with EIT a few years ago, adding three manufacturing sites, blue chips in Thailand, adding uh South uh East Asian sites, uh in addition to our already existing Chinese side, and actually we are we are exploring a little bit uh how to deal with the Indian market in the future.
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00:01:30.719Yeah, well that's an exciting one, isn't it?
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00:01:47.359And I think you're right, geopolit geopolitics is playing a huge role in that and figuring out where we where we need to manufacture, but it does feel that the pendulums were swung away from just chasing low-cost labor to this factory of the world model to something that is much more regional.
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00:02:02.000You know, especially in the customer range that we are servicing, because we position Solna over the last couple of years as a as a manufacturer for high-tech products and high-tech customers, and and you know, for them it's uh it's not easy to bring up a new supplier.
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00:02:02.319Yeah.
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00:02:12.879So it takes always years to get a supplier up to speed, so a reliable partner that is capable of manufacturing the product not just in one spot but in more spots on the globe.
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00:02:17.759I think that's that's more important, and also their demand is getting more regionalized.
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00:02:32.400Yeah, so we have many customers right now asking, you know, we need to we need to establish China as a manufacturing spot for our local demand for products that they didn't think to place it in China for decades because of IP reasons.
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00:02:36.159But if they don't want to lose the market, they they have to go that fast.
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00:02:37.840And the same is happening in the US.
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00:02:42.560And I'm pretty sure that tariffs, IP protection, that's not going away.
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00:02:43.520No, that'll continue.
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00:02:48.879In my opinion, they will continue, it might get even uh worse than we see it right now.
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00:02:49.360Yeah.
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00:03:02.560And when when I think back 12 years ago, and I remember the announcement that Zona was coming to Costa Rica, and there are a lot of dissenting voices that were like, okay, why aren't they going to Mexico where everybody else has gone?
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00:03:09.599Um tell me a bit about that decision and how the last 10 years has kind of proved you right in many instances.
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00:03:14.479I think many people were wondering about that decision those days because it was very early for Costa Rica.
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00:03:23.840But you know, um for us it's always the same things that we look at, you know, what is a fit to our culture, to our company.
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00:03:27.520As a family-owned company, we think a little bit different, we think long term.
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00:03:38.080And for us, one of the most important topics is reliability and really uh a continuation, you know, and that's that was one of the things that we saw here.
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00:04:24.319And then uh to be honest, in the beginning, it was really they made it easy for us because uh the government, uh, then the organization supporting foreign direct investments called Cindy here in Costa Rica and Procomo that did a really good job of introducing us to the country, uh showing us the opportunities which are there, and finally, it's uh it's a stable company with a very well-educated workforce here, good uh universities, and uh just beneath of us here in Cartago, we have the Tecnologico, which uh which is creating a lot of engineers, a lot of uh well-educated people that we can use here, and we have a close collaborationship with those universities already here, and that gives us a good feeling in those days already that this might be right.
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00:04:33.519And if I look at the development over the last 10 years, it proved uh it proved to be right because uh, and you will see later on on our tour that site developed very well.
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00:04:38.240Yeah, and and have you seen more of an ecosystem built around you?
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00:04:46.319You know, when you when you came here, you were the only person on this uh on this park, and this park is absolutely full and ongoing construction now.
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00:04:50.319But you need a supply chain, you need an infrastructure, you need everything around you.
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00:04:59.360Um yeah, first of all, uh that was that was funny in those days because the first time then when I saw that here, that the territory here, it was agricultural territory.
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00:05:09.040Yeah, so we were the first company being a tenant here in that newly created industrial park, and they created it because the park because of us, uh basically in those years.
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00:05:10.480And now the park is full.
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00:05:19.120Yeah, uh so uh so they did a great job here in La Lima Park to really fill the park and to establish a supply chain here as well.
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00:05:24.399So now we have uh sheep metal suppliers, we have plastic suppliers, we have cable suppliers already surrounding us.
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00:05:28.800So that's uh that's a good, let's say, landscape that is here.
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00:05:32.720Of course, if you look at all the electronics components, they're all imported here.
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00:05:37.439That's that's here, but uh we've established quite a good supply chain for us in the meantime, you know.
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00:05:41.279Yeah, and potentially a doubling of capacity here over the coming years.
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00:05:45.360You have the space now to do it, you have SMT lives coming in here pretty soon.
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00:05:48.399Um, how important is that to the customers?
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00:05:53.120Are the customers talking about growing their business here in Costa Rica for the US market?
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00:06:00.079So, you know, that uh that expansion that we did, and we're nearly tripling the floor space uh with that uh new building here.
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00:06:12.720That was per what we see how the customers were developing over the last few years, and the requests that we see right now are really big, and this is why we had to extend it.
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00:06:14.000And we are prepared now.
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00:06:18.240You know, 10, 11 years ago, we were new, we had a new team here.
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00:06:21.279The team developed really good over the last years.
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00:06:30.560We have a lot of technical know-how in the meantime here in Costa Rica, and so that the ground is laid for that uh expansion and also for the growth that we're gonna see.
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00:06:36.879Yeah, and Octavio's got a great team here, and many of the team that were here when I first came 11 and a half years ago are still here.
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00:06:37.680That's really important.
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00:06:39.439The management team is still the thing, yeah.
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00:06:42.639So that's that's an argument more for Costa Rica.
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00:06:52.800You can create a stable, well-known workforce if you have you know enough passion and and really give them the time to develop yeah, and the vision to do that.
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00:07:07.120And last thing, the customer journey over those 10 years, if you think of those one or two customers that were first here and how you've added more customers, what what's their impression been as they've built a relationship with Zona in Costa Rica?
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00:07:24.399You know, we have a few really interesting and demanding customers here that uh that uh developed us here as well in Costa Rica that they gave us the time, uh, and and that helped a lot to develop a team here that is able to deal with demanding customers.
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00:07:28.319Uh, and uh and we proved it with uh some of the products that we have.
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00:07:33.439We have medical products on the shop floor, we have aviation products on the shop floor, and that's not easy to build.
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00:07:40.000You know it because you you come from the industry, and uh and so the team developed well, the customer demand is there.
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00:07:46.800We have now a level that is really capable of dealing with really also good competition, so yeah, that's that's all done.
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00:07:52.560Yeah, and not too many other EMS companies have arrived here, so you um you still have a lot of it to yourself.
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00:08:01.680Yeah, there's there's some smaller uh EMS players here, but uh not the big guys, and we are the biggest one here in Costa Rica, and that gives us certainly an advantage here.
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00:08:03.680Marcus, always a pleasure.
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00:08:05.439Thanks for being here.
