A Chinese company builds its Central America hub in Costa Rica
For a Chinese new-energy company — entity setup, Zona Franca admission, local hiring, customs and warehousing, and a banking and settlement structure, with distribution across six Central American countries.
Region：China → Costa Rica (serving Central America)
Background
The client, a Chinese new-energy company, needed a regional hub covering Central America — one that could handle warehousing and distribution while also carrying local after-sales and training.
Costa Rica was a straightforward choice: political stability, a mature free-zone regime, a solid bilingual talent pool, and road and sea links to its neighbours.
Our role
Build the local operating system — people, goods and money, all three in parallel.
What we did
People
- Recruited a local general manager, commercial staff, a customs specialist and after-sales technicians; handled employment contracts (Código de Trabajo), CCSS social-security registration and salary structuring
- Processed residency and work permits for the Chinese expatriate team, plus housing and schooling on the ground
Goods
- Entity setup (Sociedad Anónima), tax registration, and the Zona Franca admission application
- Customs routing: compared Moín (Caribbean side) against Caldera (Pacific side), then fixed the primary port and customs broker
- Selected a bonded warehouse near San José and built overland routes to Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras, Nicaragua and Panama
Money
- Opened local bank accounts (including UBO and source-of-funds files), set up USD and colón accounts, and designed cross-border collection, payment and settlement routes
Outcome
Five months from signature to first shipment; a 12-person local team; distribution covering six Central American countries. From year two, the hub also carries spare-parts inventory and training.
What we see
Every Central American country runs its own separate set of customs, tax and labour rules, so the region cannot be treated as "Latin America in small". The purpose of a regional hub is to compress six rulebooks into one process that keeps running. Building and maintaining that process depends on having people on the ground.