Agent or distributor in Latin America
The commercial trade-off is the same everywhere. The legal consequences are not, and the country decides which of the two is the expensive one to leave.
Read the article →Insights
Country-specific analysis on entering Latin American markets. Written from live engagements.
One country, one sector, one argument per piece. Where a figure appears it carries its source and its date, and where something could not be verified we say so rather than smoothing over it.
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Colombia is three markets, and you have to pick one
The city with the demand is not the city with the port, and the workforce behaves differently in each. Everything written about this in English is about where to live.
Read the article →Do you need a separate product registration in every Central American country?
The procedure is harmonised across the region. The registration is not. That distinction costs European food and cosmetics exporters a year when they get it wrong.
Read the article →Where to base a Central American operation
Guatemala wins on market size and logistics and loses on tax. Panama and Costa Rica win on tax and lose on proximity to demand. Nobody has written this comparison for a commercial team.
Read the article →Does Chile's permitting reform actually make Chile faster?
A real law, passed in September 2025, with most of it not yet in force and the environmental assessment expressly left out. Plan on the old timetable, even though the platform is now live.
Read the article →Chile now charges VAT on imports up to 500 dollars
The de minimis gap closed on 25 October 2025 and the collection moved onto the platforms. If your Chilean sales model was direct-to-consumer parcels, the arithmetic changed.
Read the article →What Chilean mining will be buying until 2034
The pipeline is 104.5 billion dollars and 41 per cent of it is funded. Sizing your opportunity off the headline is sizing a market that mostly has not been approved yet.
Read the article →Can a foreign company sell to the Chilean government?
Yes, and Chile is unusual in saying so explicitly. The regulation names the documents a foreign supplier provides, which is more than most procurement systems in the region manage.
Read the article →Do you need a Chilean entity to sell to Codelco?
The registration guides all assume you are Chilean. The question a European supplier asks first is never answered, so here it is with the parts we could and could not confirm.
Read the article →Black octagons and a 20 per cent tax on food imported into Colombia
The warning label and the health tax are the same decision, and no English-language source treats them as one. For a European confectionery or charcuterie exporter they arrive together.
Read the article →Colombia's free trade zone rate now depends on exporting
The promotional pages still lead with 20 per cent instead of the 35 per cent general rate. They do not lead with the condition attached to it since 2022, which most European entrants cannot meet.
Read the article →Colombia has no tax treaty with Denmark, Sweden, Norway or Finland
A 20 per cent withholding on a gross service fee is not a 20 per cent tax. On a project with a 30 per cent margin it takes roughly two thirds of the profit, and no treaty exists to reduce it.
Read the article →What entering the Mexican market actually costs
No honest adviser can give you a single figure. What can be given is every line in the budget, what drives each one up or down, and the order in which the bills arrive.
Read the article →What a distributor search service should actually deliver
Two different products are sold under this label. One is a screened shortlist with the evidence attached. The other is a directory extract with a logo on it.
Read the article →Due diligence on a Latin American distributor
The checks that verify a candidate by evidence rather than by impression: registries, tax standing, import registrations, suspension history, and the one reference call most companies skip.
Read the article →Entering the Mexican market
Both trade agreements usually offered as the reason to enter Mexico moved in July 2026, in opposite directions. Here is what changed and how to sequence an entry now.
Read the article →What Guatemala asks a European exporter for
The best-ranking guides are American, built around CAFTA-DR certificates you cannot use. Following them will make you do the wrong thing correctly.
Read the article →Guatemala has no double taxation treaty with any country
Not with Denmark, not with Spain, not with the United States. The WTO Secretariat states it flatly, and it is the largest under-modelled cost in Guatemalan entry plans.
Read the article →Who actually pays the withholding on your Guatemalan invoice
Your Guatemalan customer withholds and remits it. Whether that is your cost or theirs is decided by a clause most European contracts do not contain.
Read the article →Your distributor holds the INVIMA registration, so he holds the market
Every guide explains how to file. The question that decides your Colombian entry is whose name goes on it, and almost nobody asks it before signing.
Read the article →Duty free does not mean cheap: landed cost in Colombia
Most European industrial goods enter Colombia at zero duty and still cost a fifth more than the invoice by the time they clear. The tax is charged on a base that includes the duty you did not pay.
Read the article →Five expansion challenges, by country
The five problems that most often derail a European entry into Latin America, and why each one is worst in a different country.
Read the article →Latin America in 2026: what changed
The terms of trade between Europe and Mexico moved twice in 2026. Here is what that changes for a European exporter, and who should still stay away.
Read the article →Five market entry mistakes that cost a year in Latin America
The recurring failure modes are not exotic. Each one is invisible on the day it is made, surfaces in year two, and was cheapest to prevent at signature.
Read the article →How to choose a market entry consultant for Latin America
What a consultant can and cannot do for you, the three kinds of firm selling under one label, and the questions that expose a firm that has never worked in the country.
Read the article →What European goods actually pay to enter Mexico
Mexico raised its general import tariff twice in nine months. Neither decree touches goods shipped from the EU under a valid origin proof, and that is the whole point.
Read the article →The Mexico market entry checklist
Seventeen items in four phases, each with the evidence that it is actually done. Assign owners, work the phases in order, and do not ship until phase three is complete.
Read the article →Mexico or Colombia as your first market?
Both give EU goods duty free access and neither accepts your CE mark. What actually decides it: size, what happens when origin fails, payment law, termination law and treaties.
Read the article →NOM-051 and the labelling deadline European food brands keep missing
Mexico's front of pack warning seals apply to imported products exactly as they apply to domestic ones, and the phases have moved. Relabelling in Mexico is possible and is not free.
Read the article →What is different for Nordic exporters in Latin America
The treaty map, not the culture map, separates a Danish exporter from a Spanish one in these markets. Two of the four countries covered here offer a Nordic company no tax treaty at all.
Read the article →Can one distributor cover all of Central America?
Usually not well, and the reason is not commercial. Registrations, customs and contract law are all national, so a regional appointment concentrates risk without removing work.
Read the article →Why a European company cannot be its own importer in Mexico
The Padron de Importadores decides who may bring goods into Mexico. It is almost never you, and that quietly hands your distributor control of your market access.
Read the article →Why your Mexican distributor asks for 90 days
Because for most Mexican firms, supplier credit is the financing system. Bank credit is the exception, not the norm, and Mexico has no statutory payment deadline to fall back on.
Read the article →Does selling into Guatemala create a permanent establishment?
The definition exists in Guatemalan law. What does not exist is a treaty to argue it under, which makes the domestic answer the only answer.
Read the article →Does hiring a salesperson in Mexico create a taxable presence?
It can, and an employer of record does not prevent it. The test looks at what the person does, not at whose payroll they sit on.
Read the article →Pricing for Latin American markets
Converting the European list and adding freight is how exporters price themselves out of the segment they should own. Build from landed cost up to the street price, and check your margin last.
Read the article →EUR.1 is dead for Chile: proving EU origin under the new agreement
On 1 February 2025 the movement certificate stopped working, with no transitional period. If you are still asking your customs office for a EUR.1, your goods are paying duty they do not owe.
Read the article →How to prove EU origin to Mexican customs
EUR.1 still works for Mexico in September 2026. It did not survive the equivalent change in Chile, which is the best guide to what is coming.
Read the article →Skip Formulario 11 and you cannot legally take profits out of Colombia
Registering the investment with the central bank is what creates the right to remit. It is an administrative step with a permanent consequence if it is missed.
Read the article →A CE mark gets you nowhere at Colombian customs
RETIE is a lead time item, not a cost item. European manufacturers keep discovering it after the order is won, which is the worst possible moment.
Read the article →CE marking is not enough for electrical equipment in Chile
Chile has a certification regime with a published decision period and a route for recognising foreign certificates. The official guide does not mention the second one.
Read the article →Four ways to sell in Colombia, and what each one makes you liable for
Everyone answering this question sells incorporations, so everyone answers yes. For most European exporters the honest answer is not yet, and here is the line.
Read the article →Do you need a Mexican company to sell in Mexico?
Usually not, and the firms telling you otherwise sell incorporations. Here are the four routes into Mexico and what each one makes you liable for.
Read the article →Selling industrial machinery into Latin America
Machinery deals in these markets are decided before price, on certification, supplier qualification and the service answer. All three are lead time items, and all three are country specific.
Read the article →Selling to Chilean mining, and how the buying actually works
The search results for this are country guides and concession law. Neither tells you the thing that decides your first order, which is that qualification comes before the bid.
Read the article →Selling to the Guatemalan state, and the registration nobody mentions
Guatecompras is where the tenders are published. The RGAE is what lets you be awarded one, and discovering it after you win is the expensive order.
Read the article →Getting listed in Mexican retail
Three chains come close to national coverage and two thirds of Mexican municipalities have no modern-channel store at all. A listing plan built on supermarkets reaches a minority of the market.
Read the article →Sending European staff to Guatemala, and what the 90 days really means
The 90 days is shared across four countries, not granted in each. A regional commercial rotation burns it far faster than anyone expects, and every page explaining this is written for backpackers.
Read the article →Getting your technicians onto a Chilean mine site
You have won the order and your commissioning engineers cannot get through the gate. This is the most avoidable delay in Chilean industrial supply and it is nowhere in English.
Read the article →What it costs to end a Colombian distribution agreement
Colombia has a statutory formula, and a rule that voids your choice of foreign law. Calling the contract distribution rather than agency does not decide which one you are in.
Read the article →Terminating a Guatemalan distributor, and whether Swedish law can govern
The best-ranking answer to this question is an article from 1999. Guatemala rewrote the rules in between, and the current position is more favourable than the old reputation suggests.
Read the article →Ending a distributor agreement in Mexico
Mexico gives your distributor no statutory indemnity, which is better than European law. What it does give them is your certificates, your import registration and possibly your brand.
Read the article →Who holds your NOM certificate, and why it decides everything
Every certification body will explain how to get a NOM certificate. None will tell you that it is issued to a Mexican company, and that this is a switching cost.
Read the article →Withholding tax on services invoiced into Chile
The treaty exemption you were relying on can hand you a VAT charge instead. Chile closed that gap in 2023 and most European suppliers have not noticed.
Read the article →Legal questions to settle first
A map of the legal and administrative questions a European company must ask before entering Latin America, and where the answers usually differ from home.
Read the article →Where to base operations in Mexico
There is no best city in Mexico: a sales office, a plant and a distribution centre are three different answers, and this is how to work out each one.
Read the article →Soft landing programmes in Mexico
Soft landing programmes solve an execution problem, not a decision problem. Here is what is usually inside one, and who should skip it entirely.
Read the article →Finding the right distributor in Mexico
A working method for building, screening and contracting a Mexican distributor, for European exporters who cannot afford to lose a year to the wrong partner.
Read the article →Market entry or expansion?
Entry asks whether to be present at all. Expansion asks how to get more from a position you hold. Running the wrong playbook is expensive.
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