The delegate of the Cádiz Consortium, Fran González, will speak on Thursday at the round table “Free Trade Zones: Challenges and opportunities in disruptive times”
The meeting, which will be held from November 19 to 21 in Punta del Este, will be inaugurated by the president of Uruguay and will serve to consolidate ties and exchange synergies between the free zones within the framework of the AZFA assembly, of whose board of directors the Cádiz-based official is a member.
The Cádiz Free Trade Zone will also be present in the exhibition area where a stand will be installed with general information about the tax area and its Blue Economy projects.
One of the Incubazul startups, Marisma Biomed, which develops food products from salicornia, will attend on behalf of the incubates and will show its project at the Consortium stand.
The State delegate in the Free Trade Zone of Cádiz, Fran González, accompanied by part of his management team, specifically the director of Business Promotion and Foreign Trade, Marta Domínguez, and the coordinator of Incubazul, Jose Manuel Fedriani, participates this week in the Uruguayan town of Punta del Este in the XXVIII Conference of Free Trade Zones of Ibero-America, where the Cádiz Consortium will also be present with a stand in the exhibitor area.
In addition to its participation in the conference of Ibero-American free zones, the Free Zone goes to Uruguay within the framework of its internationalization strategy, which includes the promotion and consolidation of collaborative ties with Ibero-American countries to explore and advance synergies and joint work that generate opportunities for the business community on both sides of the Atlantic and which has already borne fruit with trade missions such as the one this spring to Colombiamar; or last year to Innovazul Caribe, in Santa Marta, Colombia; or trade missions to free zones in Uruguay and Argentina in 2023, or to logistics spaces in Morocco.
The President of the Republic of Uruguay, Yamandú Orsi, will be in charge of opening the Conference, which will be held from November 19 to 21 and will be attended by national and international authorities, including the director of Tax Advisory of the Ministry of Economy and Finance, Álvaro Romano; the national director of Free Zones, Isabella Antonaccio; the president of the Chamber of Free Trade Zones of Uruguay, Enrique Buero; World FZO CEO Samir Hamrouni; in addition to the president of the Association of Free Zones of the Americas (AZFA), Claudia Pellerano.
Within the framework of the Conference, which brings together the main free zones of Latin America and Spain, the assembly of affiliates of the Association of Free Zones of Ibero-America will be held, of whose board of directors Fran González is a member, and the headquarters where the XXIX edition of the conference will be held in 2026 will also be known.
The Cádiz delegate will speak during the day on Thursday in the round table titled “Free Zones: Challenges and opportunities in disruptive times”, which he will share with Andrés Prada, director of Megalabs Globa, a large Latin American pharmaceutical company; Carlos Wong, executive director of the Coyol Free Zone of Costa Rica; and Luca Estebenet, representative of Epic Aerospace, an Argentine company that develops equipment for towing satellites; all of them moderated by Fernando Carazo, general manager of the La Lima Free Zone, also from Costa Rica.
The representation of the Cádiz Consortium will take advantage of their attendance at the meeting to strengthen ties with other free zones and different entities and companies, both Spanish and Latin American, with which they will exchange experiences and learn about the actions that are being developed around free zones, innovation and the Blue Economy, axes of the new industry model that the Cádiz Institution is implementing.
In fact, in the exhibition area, the Cádiz Free Trade Zone will be present with a stand that will offer detailed information about both the Consortium and its tax facilities, equipment and privileged location as well as the projects it is developing within the framework of this new industrial model and which have their axis in the Blue Economy, Incubazul and Blue Core.
In addition, one of the startups that has participated in the Incubazul acceleration program will be present at the Cádiz Free Trade Zone stand, Marisma Biomed, a firm whose work focuses on the creation of food products from different natural sources of the tidal marsh, such as salicornia. For their activity, they have transformed marshes into R&D spaces and have discovered species with unique benefits, in some cases even preventing diseases and improving people's well-being, especially around cardiovascular health. They are a company in full growth, led by Joan and Sara Montaner, which has a multidisciplinary team made up of biologists, chemists, nutritionists, doctors or environmentalists and who will bring their products to Uruguay with the help of the Cádiz Free Trade Zone.
As part of his attendance at the conference, Fran González plans to visit the facilities of different Uruguayan free zones, among which Zonamérica stands out, one of the leading free zones in Uruguay with more than 30 years working in the design and creation of highly competitive business businesses.