Chile is an excellent market for UK and Irish businesses

 Chile is a country that has featured prominently in the news over the last few months, firstly due to the earthquake and secondly for the amazing good news story of the rescue of the 33 miners. These events and the subsequent visit of Chile’s President Sebastian Piñera to London have dramatically raised the profile of a country that until now has been relatively overlooked in terms of UK and Irish businesses interested in expanding overseas.

I have had the good fortune to work extensively with the Chilean market and to have travelled there frequently for business. I have worked in 55 different world markets and Chile certainly rates in my top 5 favourite places to do business. I first travelled out to Chile in 1998, working for a Northern Irish company who had ambitious growth plans for Latin America. I had at this stage already been working overseas throughout Europe and South Africa, but for me Latin America was something really exotic and I didn’t quite know what to expect. I think I expected llamas and panpipes but what I got was the modern capital city Santiago which would not look out of place somewhere in Spain or Italy. There is a distinctly European feel to the cities in Chile, both in how they look and how business is conducted there – much of the population is made up of immigrants from Europe.

Read More→