Flora Growth (NASDAQ: FLGC) is one of the companies at the vanguard of formulating new products, but the company has also been financially innovative, listing on NASDAQ in the US rather than following most other sector companies with operations based in Colombia that list on Canada’s TSX.

With legal headquarters in Fort Lauderdale and almost 500 acres for cannabis cultivation in Colombia, Flora Growth’s business model spans consumer goods and medical formulations. Finance Colombia’s Executive Editor Loren Moss caught up with Flora Growth CEO Luis Merchan to discuss some recent developments with the company, and the significance of the decision by Colombia’s health ministry to Flora Growth, and to the sector more broadly.

Finance Colombia: One of the things I wanted to start with is that I noticed that you signed a distribution agreement for some of your products, is that correct?

Luis Merchan: That is correct. There are several of them that have been signed over the last couple of months. My team continues to expand not only on the wholesale side of our operations but also on the CPG side of the operation in terms of distribution and revenues.

“The change by the Secretary of Health, by the Ministry of Health, puts Colombia at the vanguard in terms of regulatory and legal framework for medicinal cannabis in the world. “

Finance Colombia: Can you tell me a little bit about the distribution deals? I think I saw that some of your products are going to go into Mexico and some other markets.

Luis Merchan: Yes, as you know Loren, Mexico is a very active cannabis market. There’s a new law that is being evaluated as of today that would allow several categories of products with less than one percent THC to be sold as normal, non-regulated CPG products, which would be an incredible step towards the distribution of wellness products in the country. Our agreement was for distribution initially of our floral beauty products. Those products are actually being sold already in major retailers in Mexico like Walmart.com and Coppel, which is a massive store chain with over 300 distribution points across the entire country, so clearly we continue to make inroads, not only from a distribution and sales standpoint but also from the regulatory standpoint.

Finance Colombia: I saw that the stock took a nice bump when that news was announced. Now, here in Colombia, we recently published an article and we see where the Ministry of Health, they issued a…in the US, we call it something like a pharmacopeia, but they issued updated guidelines for what medicines and treatments are covered by the EPS, by Colombia’s publicly supported health insurance providers or healthcare providers that are known here locally as EPS (Entidad proveedor de salúd, or Healthcare provider entity), and it’s interesting because one of the things that caught our attention was that they added cannabis, both CBD and also THC products to their list of medicines that insurance companies not only can cover but actually must cover. So I wanted to get your input on how impactful that is and what that means for the industry, specifically for patients, but then also specifically for Flora Growth.

Luis Merchan: Yes, Loren. It’s a significant change. I think there’s three major topics to cover here. First, the change by the Secretary of Health, by the Ministry of Health, puts Colombia at the vanguard in terms of regulatory and legal framework for medicinal cannabis in the world. This move is very meaningful; it allows patients that are suffering from major ailments such as anxiety, depression, pain, insomnia, all these ailments, they have access now to cannabis molecules. The doctors also now have the ability to prescribe such cannabis formulations, which is a very meaningful step, and also of course puts Colombia in a very strong position in terms of how to approach the medicinal regulatory environment.

For the patients, it’s significant, and obviously patients today have for long talked about the empirical benefits of cannabis and they secure most of their cannabis formulations from the black market today, and they do it because they have to. And of course what happens with those types of formulations is that they do not have the quality standards that medical formulations should have, so they inadvertently are putting themselves at risk. Now they are not going to have to do that, they can go to their doctor, they can ask for the formulation and the doctor can give them a prescription, and so it makes it safer for patients to have access to medicinal cannabis.

And for companies such as mine, it’s a major step towards not only broadly distributing products and formulations that are already in existence, but also a significant economic revenue that can be guaranteed, almost guaranteed in an environment like Colombia where you can actually bill public entities for the formulations that are being given to patients.

Finance Colombia: I know that there are all kinds of different treatment options. There are traditional hospitals, there are doctors that are private practitioners, there are clinics that are also known as IPS down here, which are obviously different than the EPS, which are more of like what we would call a PPO back in the States. But then I see that there have also been, on a limited basis, treatment clinics that have opened up, kind of for palliative care and for treating other different things. Now, one of the interesting things about Flora, about your company, is that you guys have a really interesting distribution model because you have cannabis derived products, you have things like cosmetics, you have health foods, you have hemp textiles. One of the things I don’t remember us talking about is pharmaceutical products or medicines. How are you involved in this space when it comes to healthcare or prescription medication?

Luis Merchan: Actually, our laboratory has the ability to manufacture a wide array of products including phytotherapeutics, dietary supplements and capsules. We today manufacture skincare solutions for almost a thousand doctors that develop custom formulations for their patients and distribute them on a one-to-one prescription basis, so for us it’s a plug-and-play move. We are going to now be able to manufacture our cannabis formulations, what in Colombia’s called magistral custom formulas, and be able to plug in to that network of doctors that is already in existence. So, that would be the easier shorter route to gain access, to give access to patients and doctors to our products and formulations.

Luis Merchan, the CEO of Flora Growth.

But as you mentioned, I think the bigger play here is to plug into the broader EPS network; educate doctors on the benefits of each one of the formulators that we have available so then they are comfortable prescribing patients when they’re coming, to treat a number of ailments. So, this is going to be a campaign that is going to take some time, but our intent is to educate the medical community in Colombia with the many partnerships that we have, and we actually have developed this very robust cannabis education programs for doctors and ensure that then they in turn start prescribing these safe formulations for the treatment of the many elements that patients are looking for today.

Finance Colombia: Like you mentioned, you have your laboratory. You guys have your INVIMA registration…INVIMA, for those who don’t know, is kind of like the Colombian version of the FDA, the Food and Drug Administration back in the States. You mentioned the magistral, the custom formulas. Now, I noticed that you have on your website, which is floralgrowth.com, where it talks about the laboratory, there’s a place for people that are interested in becoming Flora Lab distributors. What kind of companies are the good candidates for distribution? Pharmacies? CPG (Consumer Packaged Goods)? Are there maybe other companies that use the ingredients? How does your distribution model work in that respect?

Luis Merchan: When it comes to Flora Lab, we offer a broad array of products. There are branded products, over 65 of them that are INVIMA registered that we distribute worldwide, and any company that is a major distributor, that has access to points of sales in Latin America, in Central America, or all over the world can reach out to us and can become a distributor for those products. But there are other categories of products that are manufactured and sold at Flora. One of those is, of course, a prescription medication. We have a number of molecules that we plug into pharmacies and drug stores. We have, as I mentioned, phytotherapeutics, which is a very specialized area of therapy and treatment, and doctors and pharmaceutical distributors can reach out to us to plug into those categories of products. And then, lastly, we also have wholesale ingredients that we sell, and distributors that are interested in the wholesale side of distribution can also reach out to us and can become a part of the Flora distribution network.

“In North America we’re selling some of our products in 48 out of the 50 states, in Mexico, in Costa Rica. We are already selling some products into Canada. When you’re in Europe our footprint expands into Portugal, Malta, England…”

Finance Colombia: What markets, what countries have you guys expanded to so far? Where do you have a presence? I know you have different brands in different locations, but obviously you’re here in Colombia. But what other countries, obviously I think Mexico, I think Spain, but let me understand now what countries have Flora Growth products across your CPG and the pharmaceutical brands. Where can your products be found?

Luis Merchan: The list is exceptional, continues to grow, Loren, from a CPG perspective. We’re in the majority of Latin America as of today and at least the markets that are the most meaningful. I think the one market that is not there…It’s probably easier to tell you what market that we haven’t penetrated yet but we’re looking to, in South America is Brazil, because of the strict rules that they have in terms of distribution, but for the rest, in North America we’re selling some of our products in 48 out of the 50 states, in Mexico, in Costa Rica. We are already selling some products into Canada. When you’re in Europe our footprint expands into Portugal, Malta, England. We have now activated these distribution agreements in several countries across the globe, like Israel, like South Africa, Germany and Australia. Those contracts will activate this year so that the flag has been planted but the revenue generation will not start until 2022, and the good news here is that our team is a global team in terms of distribution, sales and regulatory, so we’ll continue to evaluate which opportunities are opening up in terms of the regulatory framework and when those do, then we are ready to very quickly enter the market, and that’s what happened for example in Mexico, and that’s what will probably continue to happen in other countries around the world, so look forward to more countries being added to this list.

Finance Colombia: That’s great to hear. Obviously, we want you to keep us posted as we continue to cover, not just obviously the stock from a financial perspective, but also your growth as a company and your product line. It’s really good to see Colombian companies becoming true multinationals and becoming companies that are expanding into markets, not just here in Latin America, but in North America and in Europe and beyond, so it’s really impressive what you’ve been able to do in such a short time.

Finance Colombia: So who did Konecta acquire?

Mariano Castaños: Comdata. It’s a business that has more of a European footprint. lt’s the leading company in Italy, also France, and has a very good footprint coverage in England, Germany, Romania, Czech Republic, Madagascar, and Morocco. So it has a very good European footprint, and also North Africa.

Finance Colombia: That’s very interesting because Konecta is a major BPO here in America, Comdata has a huge footprint in Europe. Congratulations in this big agreement you’ve made, so tell me a little bit of the reason for the merger.

Mariano Castaños: Well, the BPO industry is evolving a lot, the consumers are evolving, they’re changing. They demand different things, and technology is accelerating all this evolution process, and the demands of customers, our customers, the companies that take care of the consumers, are also changing and evolving. What we were looking with this merger was to strengthen our offer in terms of footprint and languages. We’re a mainly a European company that is focused on Spain, with a small expansion to Portgual, and very strong in Latin America, so we had a large amount of global customers, but we didn’t have a full offer to take care of their needs in a global and consistent way. This merger was born from that, by adding Comdata’s European footprint, with Konecta’s strength in Spain and Latin America.

Comdata is also in Latin America, they have a very good presence and a very good customer base in Mexico, Peru, Colombia, and Brazil, but we are substantially larger and better positioned. The result of this is a stronger footprint, more languages, more countries, and a complemented value offer. Comdata was really good in developing value solutions and Konecta as well, and now we are taking the best of both companies to deliver a better value offer to the customers.

Finance Colombia: How many BPO employees do you have in your call centers?

Mariano Castaños: Now at Konecta we have 70,000 employees and with the merger, we will end up above 100,000 employees.

Finance Colombia: It’s going to be one of the world leaders.

Mariano Castaños: We will become the fifth worldwide.

Finance Colombia: Wow.

Mariano Castaños: Integrated, we will be the world’s 5th BPO, and our bet doesn’t end here, we’re making an aggressive bet in the United States, we disembark organically already, and now we’re looking for customers there and we’re looking to do acquisitions in the US to expand our value offer, to become more solid and consistent in the United States. Also, we’ve also been aggressive in Brazil where we have a large customer base, but we want to go further.

Finance Colombia: Excellent. We’re here at the Customer Experience Summit in Cartagena. Before, the event was in Bogota. Tell me why do you always maintain a presence here? What’s the importance of this event and Bpro as an industry association for what you do?

Mariano Castaños: Well, that’s a very good question. Bpro is the strongest association for BPOs in Latin America, I think on the world level, the association here works fantastically. This event they organized, and believe me, I participate in a lot of events and fairs in the US, in Europe, and in Latin America, and just a few times I saw one with the dynamic of this event, and particularly this year.

This is the place for competitors, where we shared practices, and vision, with the purpose of providing a better service to our customers, businesses, and clients. The best clients, the best companies of Colombia and Latin America are here, business advisors trying to learn about this and understand something as simple as how to deliver a better experience to the customers. And also there are the technology providers, who are providing their own vision, so a powerful ecosystem has been created here regarding networking, work, about building vision. I am very pleased with this event, and I am very thankful and congratulate the association and everyone that is participating here.

After two days of working together I think we all have a clear vision of how to improve the experience of the consumers and how to improve the experience of our workers, I think the event is very positive for all of us.

To dive deeper into Skyports’ strategy and plans for Colombia, Finance Colombia Executive Editor Loren Moss had a conversation with Daniel Salamanca, Skyports Colombia’s general manager.

Finance Colombia: Help us to understand a little bit about Skyports as a company. Why did you choose Colombia, and what can we expect to see here in Colombia?

Daniel Salamanca: So I can tell you a little bit about my background, I am an aeronautical engineer. I have worked for approximately seven years where I have developed different types of processes, especially in the industrial area here in the country and one of the first projects I participated in was with the government where through smaller drones, we used drones for laboratory sample transportation. That was the first test concept that we tried here in the country.

Latin America is a very dynamic place for these types of tests. Possibly people relate [to drones] more as a hobby or for audio-visual production than as a professional thing, but the impact that drones are having in the Industrial sector are changing industries. It’s a game-changing factor in the technology sector, it is very important.

“It’s not a transatlantic thing, but this will be able to transport a person from Rionegro to Medellin in 2 minutes.”

Skyports is basically dedicated to two business lines, a short-term line and a long-term line. The short-term line is dedicated to cargo delivery with low to medium capacity drones, which means that we develop through a customer supply chain structure where we move something from point A to point B, that’s what we do.

On the long-term, and understanding a little bit about the aviation story, the first operators were cargo and later passengers, so [we envision] the same thing happening with the revolution of drones. The midterm bet is to achieve the ability to develop vertiports, which are ports that are the necessary infrastructure to land air taxis, drones that can take passengers between cities, between coasts, so it’s a thing that it’s more dedicated towards aviation.

It’s not a transatlantic thing, but this will be able to transport a person from Rionegro to Medellin in 2 minutes, so let’s say that’s the bet. Currently we have operations in different parts of the world. We have operations in APAC, in Singapore, in Scotland we have a successful case in the health sector. And currently the company selected Latin America for a reason and especially Colombia, and that is because we have identified that there are possibilities, there are opportunities for connecting these people that live in rural areas.

So that’s the mission that we have at this moment, and with this type of technology we want to democratize the access to supplies, logistics, goods and even with a more humanitarian focus, and that’s why we chose Colombia, besides the fact that this country, having its characteristics. It’s a country that provides a certain amount of technology, a dynamic environment, especially Medellin, which works as a hub in this topic. So due to the opportunity and conditions that we found here, with the difficult times that people spend trying to gain access to products, food; the geographical conditions, political conditions, thanks to all of that we see opportunities where we can focus and expand the service throughout Latin America in general.

Finance Colombia: You mentioned several things, one thing is that obviously yes, there are challenges that we have here in Colombia as well as there are many areas where the access is only via ships and boats: speaking of Chocó, speaking of Nariño, there are areas like Norte de Santander and Catatumbo where the security situation is dangerous and there are drone use cases for surveillance of oil pipelines for example, but you also mention other things that are surprising to me, when you speak about drones as a way of transportation for people.

I imagine that is not approved in any country for commercial use, it must be in a test stage, isn’t that very futuristic? Something that can be conceived in a more of a long-term way like something we are not going to see in 2022 or 2023, since it’s still in the experimental stage. The process to test a new airplane which would be like FAA, European Union or Aerocivil, is a process that takes years and years so when you’re talking about going from the Airbus 320 to the Airbus 340, there’s a process of 5 to 10 years, so isn’t the idea of passenger drones more like a dream?

I can understand medicine transportation, for example, I know Skyports has a mail delivery project in England, but is transporting people like a dream or is more like a project where you can say “yes, in three years we’re going to move people” or will it still be just products like medicines and food?

Daniel Salamanca: You just said something very important Loren, it’s a bet towards the future. In this midterm line, which I just mentioned to you, what you’re saying is very clear, we only transport small cargo through smaller drones that can take up to 5, 6, 7 or 8 kilograms.

That’s what’s happening currently. Now, despite that we are aware that in the world there are a few companies, Airbus, even new companies, startups, that are developing the concept of air mobility. Countries like Singapore & Dubai are exploring the opportunity of having vertical ports, which is infrastructure oriented to this type of technology. Also companies in Europe and the United States are making the first tests of this [passenger transporting] equipment.

What we know is that this at some point transition will come, and what we’re doing is to prepare the land, the infrastructure, and the logistics to be able to at some point have the capacity of let’s say, providing the service in this kind of air mobility infrastructure. Obviously we can say it’s a dream but it’s a dream that it’s becoming tangible. Every day there are more players in the field, every day doing tests of these types of drones to transport people, and they are developing the infrastructure, the heliports where the drones will be parked. Yes, the concept definitely sounds very futuristic compared to what we have right now, but there are already many companies in the world and even regulatory bodies and institutions working to create regulations so that these can go from a dream to a reality. So far we’re just focused on what we can do which are deliveries with drones, taking a load from point A to point B.

Finance Colombia: Speaking of the commercial aspect of it, the good thing about a drone is that they are fast, and they don’t have to go through streets and road traffic. Two cities can be relatively close but there’s a mountain separating them, so travel is slow. Before from Santa Fe de Antioquia to Medellin it was like six hours because there was no tunnel, and we had to go up the mountain and then go back down.

The drones have limited capacity, and I imagine that due to the operational cost I can’t say: “I want to supply everything to a town.” So due to the delivery cost, the focus has to be on high value products, right? What is the model so that it can be profitable for the company? Obviously by the capacity of the drones, commercial limits and also the fact that when we’re speaking of drones, we’re not talking about suburban areas like Chia, or Cajicá or Llanogrande, but remote areas that have no resources. Can you provide these services in a way that is not so expensive for the end user? I’d like to understand the model, taking into account all these types of limitations.

Daniel Salamanca: Perfect, I can give you an example of what we’re doing in Scotland currently. We’re delivering vital medical supplies. With the concept of the drone, it has to be something of high value, that needs to be transported in a short amount of time. And when I say value, I don’t mean money, but for the person that is receiving it, it is something very necessary, valuable. So: high value, short time delivery, and something that needs to be transported quickly.

What we’re doing in Scotland, with this partnership with the NHS, which is an equivalent of the Health Ministry in Colombia, we developed a process for vital supplies for populations on islands receiving government assistance, similar to populations here in Colombia. The paying customer would be the medical institutions, government agencies and nonprofits or humanitarian entities.

Now in the case of low-income areas as you mention, a village in La Guajira, or a community in Chocó, it’s hard for them to afford this service. Despite that, the strategy is to be able to develop alliances with the government. In Africa there is a success case where this technology was applied. Humanitarian aid is part of the strategies we are trying to develop.

Finance Colombia: Something I’ve noticed is that you have the support of Irelandia Aviation. As we know, this is a private equity developer of airlines which has been super successful and has also worked in the US. They are from the same brains behind RyanAir in Europe. Here in Colombia, Irelandia is the engine behind Viva and its success. Tell the importance of having that backup regarding capital, knowledge and experience in the aviation sector? What does it mean for Skyports?

Daniel Salamanca: Irelandia understands the importance of investing in the future of mobility, including drones and urban air taxis, which is something that is happening right now. What we did was to create an alliance, a joint venture, to cover this part of the world. Irelandia provides its whole background regarding the aviation sector in the region, in Colombia, as well as it has done it with Mexico and Peru, and having operations throughout the region. It has this commercial background and also in the operational aspect. This alliance is very exciting and important, so that we can land with a partner that has a lot of experience in aviation development. The concept of drones for Irelandia is clear and its strategy is to bet on them for the future.

Finance Colombia: When will you operating? When will you be flying drones in Colombia? And when will you be operating serving commercial clients?

Daniel Salamanca: The pre-operational phase where we have to obtain the permissions and technical things, pilots, putting all of this together will take place through July of 2022 when we expect to begin the first operations. What we’re doing now is finishing deals with our partners or potential customers to develop proof-of-concept tests for the first or second quarter of next year. This will also depend on (Colombia’s civil aviation regulatory authority) Aerocivil, in order to have  commercial operating permission for the next year. That’s part of the roll out that we’re doing in Colombia, but we will also integrate countries like Panama or Mexico to start operations under the same plan. First we develop tests, then apply for permission with the regulatory entities, giving proof of safety and reliability, and then we jump to the commercial phase, to start billing clients.

Finance Colombia: Besides the government, with a use case like the health ministry distributing COVID vaccines, what’s the profile of your ideal client?

Daniel Salamanca: Regarding health, there is a long logistics chain: there’s the government, there are the suppliers, transportation, pharmacies, and laboratory entities…so the drone gets to be part of a chain that is already working with all the actors of the health sector, suppliers, pharmacies, health entities, government, clinics, and even foundations that also work in the health sector. Also the Red Cross and humanitarian organizations that are involved in the health process could become that ideal client we’re looking for. So, in the health sector, that’s what we’re emulating, since that’s what we’ve done in Asia Pacific and Europe.

Finance Colombia: We want to let our audience know every step and every achievement you make, so let’s stay in touch with Skyports and its growth.

Daniel Salamanca: Thank you very much. I’m here for any inquiry or comment you might have. And we will keep developing this technology here in Colombia to help the communities and the people.

Though Brazil remains champion as a notoriously complicated jurisdiction for foreign companies to enter and operate, Colombia came in as the fourth worst country out of 77 jurisdictions. In fact, while El Salvador stood out as one of the best countries for multinationals despite its crime and corruption issues, six of the ten worst countries for business complexity are in Latin America.

Mexico, Colombia, Argentina, Bolivia and Costa Rica ranked 3rd, 4th, 7th, 8th and 9th, respectively. Ever changing legislation and multiple layers of government bodies to deal with contribute to the region’s placement.

Other reasons for this positioning are the number of bodies that need to be notified when incorporating a company. South America, for instance, requires four to five bodies to be notified on average, whereas the average in other regions, such as North America and EMEA, is two or three.

Another factor is the region’s preference for in person appointments with tax and other authorities, while the global trend is towards digitalization. Consequently, businesses investing in the region have to deal with longer than usual timeframes while incorporating local entities, opening bank accounts or validating relevant documentation. The delays in more manual jurisdictions have been exacerbated by Covid-19.

When it comes to HR, South America also leads the world in mandatory pay increases, with 70% of its jurisdictions requiring those, as opposed to 27% globally (decreasing from 32% across all 77 jurisdictions in 2020).

The region is the lowest in adhering to Common Reporting Standards (CRS), with only 50% of the countries requiring it. Globally, 83% of the jurisdictions researched commit to the standards. On a positive note, Latin America has shown some signs of moving more towards the digital future. Electronic invoices, for example, are mandatory in 40% of South American countries, with the global average standing at 17%.

Finance Colombia’s Loren Moss was able to reach TMF Group’s head of North LATAM Massimo Canovi while he was battling mosquitoes on Colombia’s Caribbean coast for a frank and fascinating dive into Colombia’s challenges, what the country can do to improve, and if it is headed in the right direction.

Finance Colombia: I know that TMF Group is one of the leading global outsourcers that handles payroll and accounting for multinational companies. As a company expands and goes into different markets and jurisdictions, TMF partners with them so that so that they can stay compliant legally, handling payroll and handling all the legal issues with not just employment, but taxation and accounting. I saw that the company recently conducted global research on the easiest and the most complicated jurisdictions for doing business. I think you are well placed to do this kind of study, and I saw that you found that Colombia is one of the most complex places on Earth to do business.

You ranked Colombia number 4 in the world. Could you explain what problems you encountered, the challenges that you found in Colombia, why Colombia ranked so poorly and how the government might use this as guidance to understand where they might be able to improve?

Massimo: Yes. All right, so first of all, let me give you an idea of how we build the global GBCI, because I think this is the most important element, one of the most important elements. We are as TMF present in about 80 territories and countries.

So we have people all around the country, all around the world, and these are people who work for TMF. These are not consultants, these are like me, employees of TMF and what we do every year, we launch a three month survey with, I don’t know how many hundreds of questions that we have to answer in detail regarding the local situation in terms of the tax commitments, HRP commitments, general entity management duties, all of that in a very detailed manner, and what we do then, through the help of a market research company, we analyze all this data and we compare them across countries and with previous years, and that gives us a an objective way of measuring, the complexity of a country.

So it’s not me who says, “this is a very complex country”. It’s through the answers that I give, which are very objective questions like, ‘how many papers do you have to fill out to incorporate a company’ to how many authorities do you have to send them to? In which language can you send them? Can you use digital means to send them? Or you have to go in person in front of a notary to present them? Do you have to sign them manually or you can sign them digitally? So this is what we try to do, is to do something as objective as possible because otherwise it’s Massimo who is being Italian and not speaking a proper Spanish comes along and says “this is a mess”.

That’s not what we want, you know, which, by the way, this is exactly what happened to me, by the way, you know, and that’s how it works. So, and that the only way it’s not me who decides the ranking, it’s this external market research company that really puts gives a weight and the value to each and every question and makes the ranking. So for us as well, every year is a kind of surprise. We wait for this GBCI to come out because we know what we know. We give the answers, but we do not know the result or our answers and the most striking to me, news of this year is that 6 out of the 10 most complex countries in the world are in Latin America, which is surprising to me.

I went through the reports and what boils down to it, I’m giving you a generic answer that we go to Colombia. What are the key features that make a country more complex than the others? Imagine what one of the most basic one is language in most of the Latin American countries, you have to speak Spanish and you have to write in Spanish, so there’s no way of communicating to authorities in another language. In the simple countries such as Denmark, everything is in English. Secondly is the number of layers you have to deal with. Again, let’s look at Denmark, when you incorporate a company, you send everything to a single point of contact and it’s done. They take care of spreading it through all the other authorities.

Think about Colombia, you have the DIAN (Colombia’s tax authority), you’ve got all the local authorities, you’ve got the 1,100 municipalities. If you are doing business in Colombia, you’ve got difficulties when you have 16 interchange treaties, and in many cases, if you send goods to one country, it’s different than if you send it to another country. Think about the European Union, where, apart from England, now you send everywhere everything with no customs. Here, it’s not like that, so that is the other point, and last, but not the least, is the continuous change. Colombia in the last 10 years, 8 fiscal reforms, being the last one last week. Happy birthday for the eighth time!

Finance Colombia: I know!

Massimo: Right? Yes, so can you imagine for a corporation doing five years planning, what that means? They have no idea of how…Think about it, they just increased the tax rate by 3%, which for a company is a fortune, and then you don’t know what is going to happen next year because if this is the trend, how can you trust a country that every year or so changes its fiscal environment? So these are the keys.

At the end of the day, the key element that make Colombia such a difficult business place, and then again, as you say, you know, the country’s trying to change. Look at what they’re doing now with the e-invoicing. Now they have implemented electronic invoicing. As of October, it is compulsory as well to send everything digitally, that’s a big investment to make for a company. On the other hand, you incorporate a company—I had to do it and I had to go to a notary with my beautiful fingertip!

Finance Colombia: I’ve done business in Colombia since 2013, so I understand. Yes.

Massimo: And again, you know, and then the UBO (Ultimate Beneficial Owner), you incorporate the company and most countries in order to—it’s good to have legislation on anti-money laundering. It’s good to have legislation in transparency—In most countries UBO is set to 25%, 20%, here in Colombia 5%, that means that a lot of minority stakeholders have to give everything about them, like documents, and then it has to be a notarized document, that has to be notarized here. So can you imagine a large corporation having to deal with that immediately with a UBO in Sweden having to come over to put a “huella (fingerprint)?”. These are the kinds of things, you know, it’s a bit of a bipolar country for me. It’s a fun country. I love it, but it’s still in the process of becoming a modern country.

Finance Colombia: Lots of friction.

Massimo: Enormous friction. You know, it’s something that’s prehistoric and something that’s science fiction and that puts a lot of burden into the large corporation. Again, I mean, from my personal experience, it was hilarious. I still do not have a credit card. Because after 40 years of having a credit card in every country in the world, I don’t have any credit history in Colombia, and I have to wait for six months to create my credit history. I couldn’t have a telephone line because I don’t have a credit history. So imagine a company that starts with small entities, you know, you send the person to person, this person doesn’t have a phone, doesn’t have Wi-Fi, doesn’t have a credit card because he doesn’t have a credit history in the country. So it’s still a bit, you know, that’s the thing. You want to be open to the world, but in so many things you are still a local thing that doesn’t accept the global rules.

Finance Colombia: Right.

Massimo: I think these are the big challenges that we have today in Colombia. Last but not least is the political situation, which of course, especially in this period causes a lot of question marks, many people wonder what is going to happen in one year, you know, and it doesn’t have to do only with Colombia, it has to do with Latin America, where there are incredible swings from extreme left to extreme right, and you do not know what to expect, and that’s the the dark side.

The bright side is that it’s a huge country, thanks to all its memberships in the like Pacific Alliance, OECD, it has access to a market of potentially 1.5 billion consumers, because it’s open to Europe, it’s open to the United States to Mercosur, to everything, and it’s growing. I mean, in 2020, the country, you know it better than I do, grew up about 5%, and in 2022 is expected to grow again between, I think it’s 4.3% the latest estimate. 2021, because of COVID we know, but I mean, I was stunned by the reaction the country had with the vaccination. It started very slowly and now it’s ramping up. It’s incredible.

TMF Group’s Top and Bottom Ten Most Complicated Countries For Business

As TMF, we took parts of this initiative made by the Chamber of Commerce of buying vaccines privately, and yet we didn’t use it because the public process was faster than the private one! So it’s a country full of contradiction, enormous potential, you know it’s got incredible mineral wealth, nature, tourism. It’s got a historical heritage. I mean it’s right there at the…It’s a gateway to America. People, even though the level of English is still poor, the universities are very good. The level of know-how and a cultural level is very high, and so again, it’s, I mean, I feel like, I’m in Italy 50 years ago.

Finance Colombia: Okay.

Massimo: I really think this is a country of opportunities, and again, as in any country opportunity, it’s really difficult to grasp them and having somebody who’s a local expert who can help you drive through all the nonsense. Let me put it this way. You know, all this contradiction or this challenge that you have can help you a lot, because there’s this again, it’s like opening a mind, you now start digging and there’s a lot to dig. That’s why I’m here. I mean, I wouldn’t be here otherwise.

Finance Colombia: It’s a fun place to live. It’s convenient for me being American, it’s three hours from the States, you know, my teenage daughter gets on a plane and flies down here to visit without any kind of hassles or problems. It’s not like she’s going to cross the world or anything like that.

But I remember when I first started a business down here and I had my first employee and she came to me and she said, “are you going to pay my prima?” And I said, Prima, okay, that’s a cousin. I said, your cousin, why am I going to pay your cousin? And she said, no, you have to pay me an extra salary!

I never heard of that, so I learned a whole lot of things the hard way, but eventually I learned how to navigate things myself and go down to the DIAN and all that stuff like that, but especially for big companies, you’ve got to have people and I already knew Spanish when I came down here too and I’d already known the country for 10 years before I moved down here, but it is very complex, and even though I did it myself as a small business person, still I made a lot of mistakes and these mistakes were for me, kind of inconvenient, but for a big company can get somebody fired or in really big trouble, and they’ve got to use a partner, especially when they’re multinational, because national tax strategies, Colombia, of course, as a country, that one of the few countries that, that taxes on worldwide income, and that creates problems for individuals, for…

Massimo: Yes, and especially directors here are personally liable and that makes an enormous burden. I mean, this is a country where you want to have a zero-risk based approach, you’re not going to do business. It’s as simple as that, you need to have a very strong compliance office. You need to have very strong, local support, and you need to get, you know, a bit of an appetite for risk, because here, you know, now that the laws are changing and first it’s like in Italy, it’s called Solve et Repete, first you pay the fine, and then we discuss,

Finance Colombia: (Laughs). I mean, the former governor got arrested–. Well, they’d have charges against one of the governors has got removed here, and he got a corruption that he’s stolen the money or anything like that, but he said that the terms on the loan, you know, the currency fluctuated in and they blamed him for that, and so now one of the presidential candidates is under–. And I think that it might be politically motivated because he’s going to be a strong candidate, but he’s being held personally liable for the cost of a contract that was adjudicated in foreign currency, and when the foreign currency fluctuates it, after he’s out of office, they came back to holding him liable. The Hidroituango project here, the hydroelectric dam, they found 26 entities and people…

Massimo: Wow.

Finance Colombia: Personally liable say that they own something like 4 billion Pesos. So something like $300 million or something like that. One of the guys is a former mayor, another guy, and they weren’t involved in…So not corruption, not like, hey, I stole somebody’s money—No, they’re saying this dam has a problem in the construction, and then technically how they built the tunnel, right? and because you were mayor, when they built the tunnel, you’re liable, like you’d have to pay, they found 26 different people liable…

Massimo: Wow.

Finance Colombia: I think that, you know, it’s one thing if you’re kind of at a smaller level, but it can be nightmarish when you look at it now, there are situations. If you don’t have complex solutions and they need to bring in professionals like you guys to handle these things, but it’s really could be scary when you start to get into the big bucks.

Massimo: Yes and think about it as well. You know, the judicial system: We figured out it can take up to 1,300 days to have a contract enforced through a court. I mean, 1,200 days it’s a life! That reminds me of Italy because it’s more or less the same. So I think, you know, here you can see the Latin inheritance. I think, you know, like Argentina, Colombia, they took the European inheritance and they brought it to excellence. I mean like bureaucracy difficulty of doing business. It was just beautiful for me because I feel like I’m at home, and again, you know, can you imagine you’re a small company, you’re a small entity, you’ve got to implement a contract and it goes into the front of a court and you have to wait for three years? You’re bankrupt!

Finance Colombia: Exactly, and that’s why it becomes harder to do business here, because what happens is that there’s a lower level of trust because I mean to rent a place it’s very difficult for an individual to rent a place in Colombia because it’s so hard to evict somebody. In the US is, it depends. It goes differently from state to state. But in the states where it’s hard to evict people, it’s hard to rent. Where it’s easy to evict people and there’s little risk So it’s easier to rent and down here, I mean, I’ve seen foreigners come down here and have to pay somebody the entire lease term in advance or things like that, or their company has to sponsor them. When I first came down and I’ve got a credit history now, and I’ve been down here and I’ve got my residency. But, when I first came down here, my first two apartments, I had to use personal connections and people had to go and say, look, I know this guy, and I literally had letters from government agencies call the landlord on my behalf and said, look, we know this guy and it’s important that you help out.

Massimo: Loren, that’s exactly what happened to me.

I came here. I had to look for apartments. I have a contract with a global company in Euros. So I’m not exactly poor and they didn’t want to rent me an apartment! “You know, you don’t have credit history.”

Finance Colombia: Right, and a lot of that is because once you rent to somebody here, the court system is so slow. It’s so difficult to evict somebody that I mean, if you’re in a poor neighborhood, they just go get some thugs and they just come and throw you out and don’t worry about it. But in a nice place, they can’t do that and they have to do everything legally, and this is really difficult and that makes it harder for the lessor. As you know, in the US renter’s insurance pays like if you’re couch catches on fire or something like that, but down here, rental insurance pays the rent to the landlord and it goes after the people because it’s so complex, and it’s complicated.

One of the things that I wanted to ask you is what, what are the kinds of companies that should reach out to TMF and when should they reach out to TMF?

Massimo: I would say our core business is global corporations, which are large enough to expand into new countries and small enough not to need, local people, experts to be hired. Because what happens is we are very strong at the initial stage of the company where, you know, you’re here, you’re lost, but you need to set up an entity and you need to start growing at that point. You want to have somebody who manages your risk and who makes your cost variable and has the local expertise to support you in everything like setting up a company, having your own payroll.

As I say, here the HRP systems, having your own accounting system, tax system and how to grow into the business. Now with COVID, we saw many companies keep working with us, even if they reached big levels, because we give them something that other companies do not give, which is consistency. That is, you get the same reports, the same treatment. You got one single point of contact throughout the region because we’ve got offices in any single country.

So that is why we have enormous corporations as well, who keep working with us, even though you will say, no, this is impossible. Why shouldn’t we do it in house? Because even if it may be, it may look more expensive, realize that we are always up-to-date in any country. We give you one single platform. For instance, in Costa Rica, we have a service center to serve all the countries in the Caribbean. So we use one single solution. Can you imagine the company, as it always happens, you open up a branch in a country, in another branch in the country, general managers open, buy its own solution, and other country buys its own solution with us. It’s impossible. We use one single solution, and that would give me one single report in the same language throughout the country. So, the typical client of ours is a multinational growing with expansion plans into a region and with the appetite to grow fast without having a fixed cost burden in house.

Humanos 3D Foundation partners with local institutions like hospital operator San Vicente Fundacion, the University of Antioquia, and Medellín’s tech accelerator, Ruta-N. Just as importantly, the work is made possible financially and logistically by the Viva Air Foundation, Australian Embassy, and the Toucan Spanish School, among others. (If you would like to support the foundation or get involved, click here)

Recently, Viva Air flew the Humanos 3D Foundation team to Colombia’s Caribbean region to fit 25 youth with new, custom themed prosthetics in Valledupar, but they hope to fabricate and donate at least 100 this year. Finance Colombia’s executive editor Loren Moss paid a visit to The Humanos 3D Foundation’s Medellín headquarters to learn more about this innovative nonprofit from founder Adam Armfield (above).

Finance Colombia: So tell us how you first ended up in Medellin.

Adam Armfield: So I’m Australian and I worked in the corporate health industry for many years, in both London and Sydney. I arrived in Colombia about seven years ago. I wanted a break from the corporate world, and so I decided to come to Medellin to take six months off to see what I could do. I didn’t really have any plans so I put the backpack on the back and came over just to explore the city and learn some Spanish, basically, and after six months I decided to stay.

Not long after that, I had to think about a business idea, what I wanted to do. I became very interested in 3D printing, and so I went to New York for a five day conference where I found people who were starting this project of building hands. That’s a great way to learn about 3D printing while I set up the business, and so I came back to Medellin with a 3D printer and I just started making these hands; not for anyone, but just to see if I could do it.

When I made one or two of these, I opened the business up and about six months later, someone from a local science club heard that I had a 3D business and I’d been making these hands, and they had a student within the science club, who went to work with me to learn about 3D printing, but also to deliver one of these hands to a young guy, and so we delivered the hand. From that point on we started to get more people…but I was running the business at the time.

Finance Colombia: What was the business?

Adam Armfield: So the business was just a 3D printing shop. 3D printing services and buying and selling, the consumables and the printers. The business, well it was tough for me, it didn’t do well and it wasn’t going that well, and I had plenty of capacity on the 3D printers, and so we had the students and we also were getting calls on, “I need a new arm.” Well, why don’t we do this on a Thursday night or Saturday mornings? We can just do a part-time sort of social project within the business, and we had spare capacity, and so we started like that.

Then I received a call from someone who heard about our work from England and they said, “well, I want to come and work with you, and I want to volunteer.” (I asked) “I want to know how many days you want to come?” She said “I want to do six months with you.” And I was like I’m not sure if I’m going to be here in six months!”

She came over and said “Look, we want to raise some money for this, you can pay for the materials, you can pay for the space, but as a business you can’t accept donations.” So we actually decided:  There’s a lot more interest and energy around this project. Let’s set it up as its own Not-for-profit.” So back in 2017 we established as an official NGO within Medellin, and now 90% of my work is in the foundation. I still have the business, but it’s online mainly, doing a few signs here and there. So that’s pretty much how we started.. Once you got a little bit of publicity, more people…I mean, we’ve got great projects, we probably have more 3D printers here than many of the universities have in their entire engineering departments, and we’ve got 3D scanners so we opened the doors up to them and it’s just grown. Now we’re doing mobile clinics. This year we’re looking to deliver 120 devices. Last year we did about 60, so yes, it’s growing.

Finance Colombia: Here in Colombia, there are congenital birth defects but there are a lot of people that are victims of the conflict and, you know we have a land mine problem. Why don’t you talk a little bit about the people that you’re helping and how that came to be? The gap that you’re filling here in Colombia?

Adam Armfield: Sure. I guess as many people know, Colombia still has a huge problem with conflict and it has been a historical problem. Initially we were thinking about this project and thinking that would be something which we could tap into and we could help a lot of these people. We have helped several people who’ve been victims of conflict and mines, whether it’s been through standing on landmines. I would say most, a majority of people who stand on the landmine in general lose their legs. We have dealt with cases where people have been armed or disarming mines, so we try to run as a nonpolitical organization, not religious, so we offer help to anyone who needs it and we don’t go too much into their background.

We’ve dealt with soldiers and we’ve dealt with ex combatants. When we did have one soldier who was trying to disarm a mine and he lost both his hands and his sight when it went off in his face, this presents a new challenge for us, because how do you use a prosthetic? You don’t know what you’re picking up. So, we actually had one of the international students come over and worked with the local teams and we made a device which had a motion sensor in it, and then a motion sensor, a distance sensor, like what you’ve got in the back of your car, and so this guy would get a ‘beep beep beep to find what he’s looking for and then double his arm. The family called us about three hours after the delivery and said, please take it off him because he’s walking around the house beeping us crazy!”

And so we went to version two, where we put a vibrating motor in there, so we still had to do the sensor, but instead of beeping, it just vibrates faster when it gets close to the item. That makes sense. So, yes, that was one of the mine victims, victims of conflict, more of the victims of conflict to people who’ve had  their limbs chopped off, so they’ve literally been there when their towns have been attacked and they’ll take off the both or one arm off of a machete and in many cases they’d also cut their throat or hit him in the back of her head to make sure the job’s done. We’ve received a few of those, not a huge amount, but two or three of those cases.

They’ve usually waited 15 or 20 years to receive the help from the government. They tell stories about discrimination when they go into a hospital, they’ll be put in the system and then someone in the administration won’t let them continue because they will say “they’re the rats” or “they don’t deserve help from the rest of us,” etcetera, etcetera, and so they’ll get thrown out of the health system and never get an arm. So we can step in and help people in those lines as well.

Finance Colombia: Obviously there’s direct help that you’re offering to victims of violence or conflict, but another thing that you’re doing that is very interesting is you’re contributing to the open-source community. Tell us about that, because a lot of the design that you’re making, you are also sharing with the world.

Adam Armfield: Sure, everything we do here is open source. Any of the designers, anyone, any of the volunteers who come from the university, we make it very clear that we’re going to copy, share, mutate, improve, do whatever we want to do to the designs, and a lot of designs that we actually work with have come from other communities around the world who are working with similar projects. So not only do we generate our own new designs, but we also hack some of the designs that exist, and then we rerelease those designs to the world. So open source basically means there’s no license on it, they’re completely sharable, and we feel this has a really big impact in what we’re doing.

Anyone can use our designs, and yes, we are using them here in Colombia, but our designs are now being used all over the world, from the United States to England, to Africa. With this type of technology, we’re changing our designs every couple of weeks. Every few months we get some good designs that we use, but we’re always personalizing and changing, and so for a bureaucracy like Colombia, where you have INVIMA (health & medical device and product regulatory agency), but in a design type of environment, you’d need to submit one design and wait two years to get approval, and then you want to change a finger when it is designed, and you’ve got another two years to wait

It’s a long process. It takes up to two years. There’s another company here in Medellin, which has gone down that path using 3D printing too, but they don’t donate the design, they sell them for up to $5,000 for a robotic arm, but we’re friends with them and we’ve worked together, we’ve taught them about the process and for us, it’s just not worth it, there’s a lot of time, a lot of money, a lot of things which inhibit the innovation and the creativity of the team, and so what we prefer to do is rather than go down the sales route, we keep it all open source, and we donate them all as experimental devices. This project hasn’t faced any problems over the last three or four years, they have similar projects in the United States and England, have similar regulatory structures, but as long as we’re not selling them and commercializing them, and we include a disclaimer that these are experimental devices, we’re usually pretty good.

Finance Colombia: You know, I know a company in the States, Sprintray, that is now 3D printing teeth, dentures, or that kind of thing, so I would imagine that you guys here, have having a central office in metro Medellin, but I imagine that long-term, there’s a benefit because the 3D printing technology…Colombia has decent infrastructure where you can get out to the remote areas pretty easily and get into the city if you need to, but I imagine that if I look at other places in the world or areas of conflict or areas where they don’t have the infrastructure that we have here, by using 3D printing technology, you can remotely take this, probably either transport it via air or stick it all in the back of a van and go somewhere and actually do things right there.

Adam Armfield: You sure can, and this has already been done. We’re part of a global network called Enable, a kind of non-centralized global distribution of 3D printers. It could be someone who’s just doing a college project, it could be someone like us, who set up their own not-for-profit, but basically, it’s a support network where we provide designs, and we share knowledge. One of the groups, actually raised money to go to Africa, took a 3D printer and they found an area of high need, and then they went over and taught the local community, with the 3D printer, how to use this technology. They made some (prosthetics) while they’re there. These (printers) weigh about ten to fifteen kilos, and then when they leave Africa, then installed the knowledge remains there.

Finance Colombia: Another thing is that you have an active internship program, and that’s another benefit because you have students here in Colombia, students here in Medellin that are studying things like bioengineering, medical engineering, and those types of fields. I see that you have a lot of students and former students that are getting hands on experience, and then you’ve also mentioned that you’ve had interns come internationally. So why don’t you talk about not just the international ones and the opportunity that they’ve been able to gain, but let’s talk about the local students and, forgive the pun, the hands-on experience they gain.

Adam Armfield: As you mentioned previously, we had a lot of international students just from word of mouth and then they’d come over and help us, anywhere from two weeks to six months. We always had Colombian volunteers as well, but it was always maybe a 50-50 mix. When the pandemic arrived, we lost pretty much all the international students and we had to change our funding methods. We started to expand our programs within the universities, and so now, pretty much everybody who works with us are Colombian. We work with a range of universities here and we offer them internships and volunteer placements, so the internships are six months. The interns are usually in their final semester or final year of bioengineering.

We put them through paces. They have to pass a test because we’re getting a lot of applicants now, and so we will actually (test) them: Do they know basic programming? Have they got  3D printing or 3D design skills? So these guys arrive, they’ve got good skills which contribute to our organization. They’ve learned, but now they can actually put it into practice, so the idea is not only will they work on the current designs and help with distributing and making the hands and the arms to the people who need them now from our list, but we’ll organize one specific project for them each to have while they’re here.

For example, Sara has been doing the development of the fingers and the splints, these new guys here will be working on new versions of robotic arms as well, as some other projects, just quickly (to Sara), tell me about the projects that you’ll be developing this year.

Intern Sara Patiño adjusts a robotically enhanced Batman-themed prosthetic arm

Sara Patiño: We are going to develop a transhumeral prosthesis and our intention is to integrate it specifically to the person who requires it. For example, if the person needs it to practice a sport, how can we help them so that they can practice sport with the prosthesis? For instance, we are going to work with a girl so that mobility can be facilitated with the prosthesis, or a person who is going to drive, we are going to work the same part of the prosthesis so that she can drive comfortably.

Adam Armfield: Thank you very much. So generally, the students will come in, we get hundreds of cases and we have to turn some of them down because they don’t fit into the standard designs, so they’re transfemoral above the elbow, or, they just have a badly mutilated hand, which doesn’t fit into the glove, so we’ve had to turn a lot of these cases away with one look. We only focused on the easy cases, we’re trying to get the low hanging fruit that can serve as many people as possible. But now, because we have this expanded program with the universities, when one of these guys come in, we can say, “look, here’s the caseload, choose some cases which we can help,” and so they’ll do the transfemoral, they’ll do a case here with a little girl who maybe has just a one finger or the robotics, so the idea is not only can we then generate new devices, which all become open source, and we publish those on our website that can be used around the world, but we then have a whole range of designs.

So we won’t have to deny as many people in the future because there’s only a certain number of amputations, of cases that you can have, and we’re also giving these guys an opportunity to apply the design skills, design thinking, and when they leave here, the idea is obviously if they do well here, we’re going to give them a good reference. They’re going to have some good work experience behind them, and they can go out and do this either professionally, in a commercial environment or working in some type of not-for-profit.

Finance Colombia: I would imagine that the costs add up, so how do you meet the funding challenges? There are some people in Colombia that have the means to pay for things, but I imagine a lot of people, especially in rural areas don’t, so you end up I would imagine, donating a lot of the work, if not most or almost all of it. So tell me about the funding model.

Adam Armfield: So, the costs do add up as you mentioned, because not only do we have to pay the normal cost of rent, we do have three employees, the rest are volunteers. We have probably about 15 volunteers, but we have the cost of materials, the cost of the 3D printers, the cost of maintenance, but one of the other costs, which was becoming a little bit unmanageable for us for a while, was the cost of people having to visit us. A lot of these people as you mentioned, live in rural areas. They live on the other side of Colombia. We have people who will travel 15 hours to see us. They would hop on a bus, or two buses traveling from all parts of Colombia to get here, whether from the south, the east, anywhere, for them to come across, they’re paying at least a hundred thousand pesos one way at least, and then they’re having to pay for a night of accommodation here just the come and take the measurements, and they’ve got to do it again in a month’s time to come and pick the prosthetic up.

Now, if that person is a child, you can double that cost because there is a parent that has to come, so now you’re looking at close to 1.5 to double just on their travel expenses. That’s not possible for most families in Colombia. And so all these costs that come up, we were paying for them. 90% or 95% of our money was through the volunteers that came, international volunteers, they would come over and make their own donation, or they’d set up crowdfunding campaigns. Every year we would run two, maybe three crowdfunding campaigns with a new set of volunteers, because if you try to crowd fund as an organization, you’re lucky if you can do that once a year, people don’t do that. But if you get fresh volunteers, fresh networks in, and people who bring their own network of people, and then they donate…so that’s how we were running, but as we started to get more cases in, we had more and more costs coming up that still wasn’t viable.

So that’s when we met with Viva Air and (Executive Chairman) Declan asked “how can we help more people?” Those are the kind of thoughts that he had, and I said, “look, mobile clinics would help us reduce costs, we could go out to them. We could do 20 people in a space of a couple of days, rather than paying 20 people, one or two journeys to come and visit us, you know what I mean?” So we can do these for a tenth of the cost of by going out there.

So to reduce these costs, instead of inviting 20 people a year to come visit us, we can go and see a town…We’ve developed training materials. We had a professional video crew who volunteered their time to develop YouTube videos, and professional documentation that we’ve done, and so we do some online training with, local, medical providers, so we’ll contact the local department and the secretary of health within regions that we think are high conflict or need help now; or they will contact us after they’ve heard about it. We’ll ask them to dedicate one or two members of staff to this project, and it doesn’t have to be a full-time, it could be a couple hours a week, but someone that we can liaise with on the ground. We train them up, how to take the measurements, they send all the official documents, all the measurements and the patient details to us. he team of interns and volunteers will then spend the next couple of weeks making (the devices).

We’re trying to deliver 10 clinics this year. We got thrown down a little bit with the (COVID) travel restrictions, but we’re on track, so the idea is to deliver 10 clinics with 120 arms or devices this year. In the end, the sponsor is the one who invested in us to do it all these mobile clinics.

Finance Colombia: Very impressive. So we touched briefly on Declan Ryan and the Viva Air foundation. So, Viva Air foundation is a major benefactor. So, so if you can touch a little bit on how that happened.

Adam Armfield: Sure. Viva Air has been a huge lifeline. This project was always running sort of month-to-month budget and these guys, when we lost our international volunteers, I thought we were done for! Because to 90% to 95% of our funding came through that. So one of our volunteers was English, it just so happened he was someone who the British embassy needed to take care of, and so I got to become good friends with one of the staff at the embassy. So that staff member helped us here and there throughout the first two years through, and then at the end of 2019 he approached me and said “hey, would you like some corporate sponsors?, I know someone within Viva Air, who could potentially help you,” and so they sent down the head of Viva Air Foundation, Monica Gil. Monica runs the foundation with some of the other ladies and so they came in and we had been applying for grants by this stage for a good year or two sending them away to whatever organization, everyone, and then long processes, you very rarely hear back.

Viva Air Foundation & Humanos 3D Team Up To Provide Custom Prosthetics To Valledupar Youth

But Viva Air came in and said, “how much do you need?” I said, this is what we need to finish the year. Three days later, they said “approved, we’ll have the money you can next week,” so they believe in what we are doing. We are in need of more sponsors still, we’ve recently got a grant from the Swiss government, we’re still in need of further funding to continue to grow and to meet our budgets going forward. So yes, Viva came in, they’ve helped us not only with the financing side of things, but Natalia (from the Viva Air Foundation) is now working with us to—as a volunteer—to design our financial projections, to make sure we’ve got everything in order as far as how much money we need, what what’s our current financial status.

So, you know, being in this organization, we take anyone as volunteers because everyone has something to offer. We’ve had, everyone from advanced electronics designers to ex corporates from Ireland to come in and tell us: “I’ve got no skills, what can I do for this?” Of course you can get painting, everyone’s got a skill they can offer, so not only can the organizations help us financially, but if they have people who want to help us with our systems or with our designs or lift things along those lines, we want to work with them as well.

Finance Colombia: Really cool story. Does the Australian embassy know about you? I think Erika Thompson is the new ambassador.

Adam Armfield: She’s great, she came to visit us. She took over from Sophie Davies. The Australian embassy heard about the work we were doing, and we applied for a direct access funding program back when Sophie was ambassador. So we’ve got about $10,000 or $20,000 from the embassy to help us, which was a great help. That actually helped us upgrade the installations to expand the amount of people we are helping.

I found we worked our guts off for like two or three years scraping and scraping, and then when there was enough momentum behind us, the embassy arrived within about a week or two, and Viva Air arrived, and so we’re going, “this is great!” We got the new ambassador, she said: “I’ve heard about your work. Can I come and visit?” And she goes, “look, we want to continue to support you,” so we just received a little bit more support from the Australian government this year as well.”

So Viva and the Australian government have pretty much brought us through to this point, and we did a crowdfunding campaign at the end of last year. We tried to do one in Colombia this year, but everyone’s tight for money. You know what I mean? To be in this type of situation where unemployment’s high, people are losing their jobs. It’s a little bit tougher to do the crowdfunding, so we’re really relying on the corporate sponsors and, and the government sponsors this year, and who knows what’s going to happen next year? Hopefully we’ll keep on growing in that direction.

You know, we’re doing a great thing here in Colombian society, not only for the people that we’re helping, but from the educational side of things, for offering opportunities to these students. It’s something that doesn’t exist in this area, and so I think if people want to get involved with us, I think that there’s a lot of businesses in Colombia, hopefully that can get involved. Obviously we accept anyone from any country, but if Colombians want to get involved, that would be great because I’m the only gringo here! Before there were more, but this is a Colombian team, and to invest in their own people through education, health, it’s something that would reflect really well within their company. We need more Colombian companies involved, but yes, as I said, we welcome multinationals as well.

Finance Colombia: One of the things that I like is that there are a lot of charities out there that are saying: “give us money” and they show you some picture of some starving kid or something like that, but you are not selling misery, but you are taking these people and giving them prosthetics and things that improve their quality of life, and the story is a positive story rather than a negative story.

Adam Armfield: It’s extremely positive. I mean, these devices, they really change the script of how someone feels about themselves. Yes, they have functionality that people can now pick up a bottle again, people can now use utensils again, or write again or paint again.  One of the stories is a guy who was donated of the (standard prosthetics) from the health system that only had three forks (instead of a hand) and these kids wouldn’t go near him because they saw him as a monster. When he got one of (ours), he came back a couple of weeks later, he was in tears, he said “because all my kids were hugging me again” because it’s like a normal working arm, you know?

So to have that effect on someone’s self-esteem, where his kids were hugging him again, he said “I can’t wait to go fishing again,” you know what I mean?

We have other kids who are arriving at school, they’ve been teased the whole time for not having an arm, not having a hand. Now they go back to school, and they’ve got a an Iron Man or Captain America hand or something like that, and all the kids are like, “wow, this is so cool!” and so the prosthetic or their disability becomes something cool and it really changes the script! We hope that the effect on their self-esteem is going to carry through into their education into their social life and eventually into their later work life. So we’re hoping this and obviously these are very long-term studies, we can’t provide data on that, but it’s obvious withy the smiles on these kids, on their faces, and we’re hoping that it has an impact.

Left to right: Esteban Rojas, Walter Gómez Ospina, Jhon Alexander Sossa Gallego, Melissa Echavarría Guarín, Sara Patiño, Tanya Corredor, Adam Armfield

Hired in October 2019 to the role of Managing Director and Chief Legal Counsel, Khiron Europe, Katterbach’s promotion to the position of President aligns with the company’s commitment to diversity and inclusion throughout the organization, including at the executive level, the company said in a statement.

“I would like to congratulate Franziska on her appointment, which comes at a very exciting time for our European team. Since joining Khiron, Franziska has been a driving force behind our European operations. Her regulatory expertise, strong leadership skills and exceptional day-to-day management of operations have allowed us to develop a differentiated, asset-light platform. Most recently, the European team launched another new product into the German market while more than tripling shipment volumes, demonstrating strong execution in Europe’s largest market,” said Alvaro Torres, CEO and Director.

Franziska Katterbach herself added: “I am a great believer in Europe’s medical cannabis market and am honored to lead our world-class team as we expand patient access, along with our market presence, in Germany and the UK. On behalf of the Company, I would like to thank Tejinder for his many contributions to our European operations and wish him well in his future endeavors.”

Tejinder Virk left the company to head Akanda, formerly known as Halo Collectives, with operations in Lesotho. His resignation will result in the forfeiture of 2.2 million stock options and 600,000 restricted share units previously awarded.

See also: Khiron Life Sciences CEO Álvaro Torres Discusses The Cannabis Company’s Unique Go-To-Market Strategy & Its Network Of Zerenia Integrative Care Clinics

Cape Verde government officials have said that Saab should be extradited, but a West African court has said that he should be freed. His fate has been appealed to the Cape Verde Courts, and while that procedure rolls forward, a groundswell of discontent, crying “Free Alex Saab” has popped up on Twitter, with an apparent epicenter in West Africa, where few people would have ever heard of Alex Saab; a Colombian of Lebanese ancestry.

BuzzFeed News teamed up with the Digital Africa Research Lab to look into the surprising support coming from Nigeria on Twitter with the #FreeAlexSaab hashtag. According to the journalists, the operation was masterminded by a Nigerian PR firm and a British nonprofit called Digital Good Governance for Africa.  According to the BuzzFeed report, this organized “AstroTurf” (US political slang for fake grassroots organizing) campaign paid influencers to tweet support for Alex Saab in an attempt to influence the judicial process in Cape Verde and broader public opinion.

When #FreeAlexSaab started trending on Twitter, the scam quickly unraveled.

Twitter subsequently suspended over 1,500 twitter accounts, including a Nigerian influencer with a large following who is alleged to have paid for positive tweets about Alex Saab. Supposed legitimate journalists for the Nigerian Tribune and TheCable also had their accounts suspended, as they not only tweeted support for Alex Saab, but tagged Twitter account @Fernand47588665, which the investigators said was used to verify tweets for compensation.

Ringleaders Exposed

Buzzfeed reports that Nigerian human rights activists and social media influencers received a document from Digital Good Governance for Africa, led by professor Naji Makarem, a lecturer at University College in London, and Nigerian expatriate Christian Elemele with instructions to recruit West African Influencers to gin up support for Saab.

“The influencer is expected to use the hashtags #FreeAlexSaab and tag prominent Nigerians, Ghanians and Sengalese handles from government, business, celebrities, activists etc. which will be provided to the influencer,” read the document.

The report goes on to say that Nigerian PR firm Alpha Reach employees recruited 40 Nigerian influencers with over a million total followers to participate in the scam. When investigators reached Alpha Reach head Japheth Omojuwa, he responded “I don’t think I can start to have a conversation about whether Alpha is involved. If they are, there have definitely been some form of nondisclosure,” Omojuwa said, before eventually issuing a statement to the effect that his organization was not involved, though also saying that it was possible firm employees worked on the campaign.

Government Involvement

BuzzFeed did not go so far as to accuse the Venezuelan or any other government for backing or participating in the operation, however the British paper Financial Times did, saying that it obtained an intelligence document concluding the Venezuelan regime “and/or its proxies (witting or unwitting) are involved in a coordinated campaign to influence both the government of Cabo Verde and its population to obstruct Alex Saab’s extradition.”

Twitter Shares Blame

The whole incident is not terribly surprising. Venezuela wants Alex Saab protected not only because he has been very valuable as a proxy for Maduro and making deals to get what the Venezuelan government wants, but the Maduro regime also fears what secrets he might cough up once US prosecutors get their hands on him. It should be said that Saab is also facing charges of fraud, corruption & money laundering in his own country of Colombia, where Colombian prosecutors have already seized several of his luxury properties.

Twitter has become the vehicle of choice for troll farms, influence peddlers, and fake accounts of all types as well as generalized nastiness—largely due to the anonymity it affords, and the ease at which fake or bot-controlled accounts can be set up with no verification. The very structure of Twitter makes it easy to buy influence and fabricate false outrage. The company seems reluctant to address this issue, which must be dealt with at the structural level, not the individual account level. Until then, troll farms from Nigeria to Russia to North Korea to Arizona.

Avianca indicated that the restrictions were necessitated by “the constant restrictions in different countries in terms of limitation of the entry of tourists, operational reductions, as well as mobility within cities, and the high uncertainty that passengers still have.”

Passengers are advised to visit the Avianca website and contact the air carrier to confirm individual details.

Suspended flights include those from Bogotá, Colombia to and from:

• Washington, DC
• Los Angeles
• Orlando
• Fort Lauderdale
• London
• Barcelona
• Curaçao
• San Juan, Puerto Rico
• Asunción
• La Paz, Bolivia
• Santa Crúz, Bolivia
• Guatemala City
• Panamá City

Also suspended are the following flights:

• Cali – Medellín – Madríd
• Guatemala City – Tegucigalpa
• Guatemala City – Los Angeles
• Panamá City – San José, Costa Rica
• San Salvador – Dallas
• San Salvador – Houston
• San Salvador – Miami
• San Salvador – Toronto
• San Salvador – México City
• Quito – Galapagos Islands
• Quito – El Coca
• San Pedro Sula – Miami

Avianca says it hopes to resume flights in April to Curaçao, Orlando, Guatemala City, and Los Angeles from Bogotá, and San Salvador to Houston, Toronto and México City.

The airline is currently undergoing Chapter 11 Bankruptcy reorganization in US Federal Court.

Based on the government website, visitors who have been in or transited through Colombia in the previous 10 days cannot enter the UK. British and Irish nationals, and third country nationals with residence rights in the UK arriving in the UK from Colombia will need to self-isolate with their households on their return.

The Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office issued an advisory for British nationals against all but essential travel to the whole of Colombia based on the current assessment of COVID-19 risks, and for security reasons the FCDO advised against travel to:

• the departments of Arauca and Guaviare (except their capital cities)
• the department of Chocó (except its capital Quibdó, the whale-watching towns of Nuquí and Bahía Solano, and the tourist site of Capurganá)
• the Ariari region of southern Meta (except the tourist site of Caño Cristales – if travelling to Caño Cristales, travel by air to and from the town of La Macarena with a reputable tour company)
• the South Pacific, Sanquianga and Telembi regions of Nariño
• the Western region of Cauca
• Buenaventura in the department of Valle del Cauca
• the Urabá and Bajo Cauca regions of Antioquia
• the region of Southern-Bolívar
• the region of Southern-Córdoba
• the Catatumbo region of Norte de Santander
• Orito, San Miguel, Valle del Guamuez, Puerto Caicedo, Puerto Guzmán, Puerto Asis and Puerto Leguizamo in Putumayo
• Cartagena del Chairá, San Vicente del Caguan, Puerto Rico, El Doncello, Paujil and La Montañita in Caquetá
• the municipality of Puerto Carreño in Vichada, except the departmental capital
• within 5km of the Venezuelan border and within 5km of the Ecuadorian border, except for the border crossing on the Pan-American highway, at Ipiales.

Beginning 4am on January 15, 2021 visitors who have been in or transited through Colombia in the previous 10 days cannot enter the UK. British and Irish nationals, and third country nationals with residence rights in the UK arriving in the UK from Colombia will need to self-isolate with their households on their return. Click here for the latest guidance for England, Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales.

Following the December 20 announcement by the Colombian Government to restrict flights to and from the UK, travelers cannot enter Colombia if their journey started in the UK, but with some exceptions to this (see Entry requirements). Direct flights to and from London have been suspended until further notice.

Travel is subject to entry restrictions

Arrivals to Colombia are subject to mandatory entry requirements:

• For air travel into Colombia, a negative PCR test issued within 96 hours prior to boarding will be required for all passengers, including children.
• Travelers without a negative PCR test may be asked to complete a written form explaining why they were unable to get a test or the results in time prior to being allowed to board by the airline. Passengers will be required to take the test upon arrival and to self-isolate either for 14 days or until a negative test result is received
• Between 24 hours and 1 hour before departure, travelers must fill out the ‘Check-Mig’ form, available on the Migración Colombia website. The traveler will receive a confirmation email that must be presented upon arrival in Colombia. Travelers also will need to complete this form 24 hours before departure from Colombia.
• Travelers must not present a fever or respiratory symptoms associated with Covid-19 prior to boarding the aircraft.
• The use of a mask is mandatory for everyone over two years of age throughout the flight.
• Travelers must bring spare facemasks and follow the airline’s instructions on how regularly to change them during the flight.
• Travelers must stay in your assigned seat during the entire flight.
• If travelers develop any Covid-19 symptoms within 14 days of arriving in Colombia, they must inform the local health ministry representative, as well as the airlines booked or flown. Land and river borders are closed at least until January 16th.

See Entry requirements before planning travel.

UK Residents Preparing To Return to the UK

If a traveler wishes to return to the UK from overseas, he or she must:

• provide his or her journey and contact details before travel
• check if there are self-isolation requirements upon return

Read UK government advice on foreign travel during the coronavirus pandemic and sign up for email alerts for this travel advice.

When travelling to Colombia during the coronavirus pandemic, British nationals are advised to see the Coronavirus page for more information.

During the COVID-19 pandemic it is more important than ever to get travel insurance and verify coverage. See the FCDO’s guidance on foreign travel insurance.

There have been large scale protests in recent months which could recur at any time. These demonstrations can be confrontational and may turn violent. A number of people have been killed and injured. Travelers should remain vigilant, avoid all demonstrations, and monitor local media for the latest information.

The UK government is of the opinion that “terrorists are very likely to try to carry out attacks in Colombia.” The security situation can change very quickly in many areas of the country. All travelers should pay close attention to warnings issued by the Colombian authorities.

Additional Information From The UK Government

Despite high levels of crime, most visits to Colombia are trouble-free. See Crime

For British abroad who need emergency help from the UK government, contact the nearest British embassy, consulate or high commission. Consular support is limited in parts of Colombia where the British government advises against all but essential travel and areas where there is a limited state presence. When consular support is unavailable, the British Embassy will liaise with local authorities to request assistance.

To contact emergency services, call 123 (in Spanish).

UK health authorities have classified Colombia as having a risk of Zika virus transmission. For more information and advice, visit the website of the National Travel Health Network and Centre website.

The Overseas Business Risk service offers information and advice for British companies operating overseas on how to manage political, economic, and business security-related risks.

If your answer is no, we have the best for you in our on-line courses at the Colombo Americano de Medellin.

The on-line course will focus on key trends that help students work in the complex business environments of the 21st century through exercises that promote the development of critical thinking. Furthermore, through the implementation of case studies, they provide opportunities for students to apply functional language in business scenarios in a practical and contextualized way.

We will be around some modules like exploring the hiring processes of their employees. The characteristics of different companies and their sectors related with the products and services offered.

E-marketing discussions can also be held using appropriate terminology, understand and develop an investment plan and understanding of the culture role playing in international business.

For last, the students can have the possibility to choose a module that best suits their needs according to their field of action and / or their role within the company.

For more info, dial 57-3045334241 or email to coordinadorcorporativo@colomboworld.com  or visit our website www.colomboworld.com

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