Visit to Makol

Today, Thursday June 5th, we took a short trip to a Costa Rican business by the name of Makol. Makol is a company in one of Costa Rica's Free Trade Zones that specializes in the Distribution of medical Supplies in Latin American and other places around the world. From the visit I learned a lot about the medical supplies industry in CR, which happens to be a very large player in their economy. Makol specializes in mostly ER, cancer detecting, and surgical equipment.

The biggest surprise to me was the difficulty Makol goes through to run its business successfully. Problems arise in all sorts of areas including, tenure bids with the governments, terms and contracts with their customers, and the changing prices in the world today. Competition to win bids is usually very fierce and it is difficult to meet the exact wants and needs of customers which usually results in losing the contract. None the less, last year Makol did 1.2 million U.S. dollars worth of sales and hope to grow that figure to 1.5 million this year.

Due to rising costs of oil, both transportation costs and in some cases product costs are rising. This creates difficulty in submitting bids too far into the future. Since accepted bid prices must be honored for up to 4 years, according to Costa Rican law, companies like Makol are very cautious in the amount of cost in their proposals. Secondly, when dealing with Costa Rican hospitals and other various regions, where the government controls the health care market, it is very difficult to win contracts. When the government awards bids, it demands that their exact needs be met and they always choose the lower price. Makol stated that they have lost contracts before when their product was less per ounce but because their bottles were 11 ounces and the government requested 6 ounces, they did not win the contract.

Another problem that Makol expressed was that Costa Rican law is different from those in America and Europe where they gwet a lot of their products. Because of this, many times shipments do not have the required documentation to be legal in CR. This is just another kink in the way business is performed. If shipments from these countries are late to Makol, Makol has trouble getting their orders out to their customers. If an order is late in Costa Rica, by law, Makol must pay up to a 10% fine of the sales amount which can be devastating to the bottom line.

Makol strives to keep inventories as low as possible but realize that getting them to zero is almost impossible. Due to reasons like the vacation month in the EU and Costa Rican hospitals routinely requesting orders in short amounts of time, some inventory must be kept on hand. I asked if inventory was kept electronicall or manually. The answer is that everything has a bar code but that their reader does not work, which results in manual inventory.

As far as Makol's relationship with sustainability, they did not believe that they hurt the environment. But with the shipping they do, based mostly of fossil fuels, their is room for improvement.

Overall, being able to see a piece of the medical supply industry in CR was very educational. It opened my eyes to another thriving part of Costa Rica's economy and enlightened me of the difficulties the industry faces. Makol seems to be successful by attempting to predict the future in terms of cost. To continue to grow, companies like Makol must continue to be able to work with corporations and countries around the world.