Micro circuit breaker factory in Costa-Rica

Since Costa Rica hosts the region's only Intel semiconductor assembly and test plant, electronics manufacturers in Costa Rica may enjoy a significant economic advantage. Finally, Costa Rica is geographically located between North and South America, and has ports on the Atlantic and Pacific oceans.

Nearshore manufacturing is a trend that is continuing to rise as China's trade sector becomes more complex. For those exploring options closer to the U.S., Costa Rica provides many benefits, especially in the EMS industry. In fact, electronics were the country's no. 1 manufacturing export last year. Some of the perks include:

The Smiths Interconnect Costa Rica plant is known for a producing a wide range of electronic components and is working towards the implementation of a semiconductor manufacturing and assembly capability. Current products include the following. Figure 3. Smiths Interconnect operator verifying the results of a screen print.

A number of high-profile programs use Smiths' Costa Rica components. For example, the Frontier Mars Rover uses the Thermopad, the Indian Chandrayaan-3s Moon Lander has both the Thermopad and LabFlex T cables and the F-35 Lightning military aircraft features radar system attenuators.

There is no shortage of talent in Costa Rica, with a labor pool of 2.3 million and the number of university engineering graduates rising steadily at a rate of 7.1% per year since 2010. The workforce, 35% of whom are 15-34 years old, requires low wages which puts them in direct contention with both China and Mexico.

Costa Rica is the fifth largest Central American country with a population of almost five million. Traditionally, the country's major exports have been agriculture goods, such as coffee, sugar cane, pineapples and bananas; however, since the 1990s, manufacturing has made major in-roads into their economy.