Latin America gets skipped by smaller manufacturers more often than any region except Africa, usually for a reason nobody says out loud: it feels like a lot of work for a market nobody on the team knows. Sometimes that is the right call. Often it is a default dressed up as a decision.
Brazil is the region, mostly
Brazil holds 100,893 product records against 33,389 for Colombia and 14,324 for Mexico. It is the anchor by a wide margin, and it is also the market with the deepest public purchasing trail — we hold nearly 15,000 tender records for Brazil, at award level.
That last point matters more for a small manufacturer than for a large one. If you cannot afford a market study, a procurement history is the closest free substitute: it shows what was actually bought, by which institution, and often at what value. You are not guessing at demand; you are reading it.
Costa Rica is not what its numbers suggest
Costa Rica shows 50,024 product records — comparable to Saudi Arabia and larger than Malaysia, in a country of five million people. That is not a domestic demand signal. Costa Rica is a significant device manufacturing and export hub, and its register reflects production rather than consumption. Nearly two-thirds of its registered manufacturers also hold a US or EU registration, which is the signature of an export base.
It is a clean illustration of why record counts should never be read as market size, and worth knowing before someone puts it on a shortlist for the wrong reason.
The field is more international than people expect
Roughly 48% of Brazil's registered manufacturers also hold a US or EU registration, and about the same in Colombia. That is a more familiar competitive set than most of Asia offers — closer to Southeast Asia than to China or Japan.
For a smaller company that translates into something practical: the distributors have handled foreign manufacturers before, the documentation expectations will feel recognisable, and you can benchmark against companies you already understand.
So is it worth it?
A reasonable rule for a company with limited regulatory bandwidth:
- Yes, if your category shows up in public tenders. The purchasing is legible, which lowers the risk of the whole exercise more than anything else on this list.
- Yes, if you already hold US or EU approval and your documentation is in order — you will be entering a field where roughly half the players did exactly that.
- Probably not yet, if you are choosing between Latin America and a first Asian market and have bandwidth for one. Asia's reliance-friendly markets generally compound faster.
- Not on the strength of Costa Rica's record count, which is a manufacturing artefact.
The mistake worth avoiding is treating the region as one decision. Brazil is a serious market with a readable demand signal. The others are genuinely smaller and should be evaluated on their own terms rather than swept in behind it.
Method, and what this is not
Every count in this piece comes from the records Meridian Trace holds as at 26 August 2026: Brazil 100,893 product records, Costa Rica 50,024, Colombia 33,389 and Mexico 14,324, alongside 14,868 award-level tender records for Brazil. Figures are re-verified against the records rather than carried forward from earlier pages, and they move — the records grow continuously, which is why the date is stated rather than implied.
Two limits worth weighing. Record counts are not market size — they reflect each register's filing conventions as much as the market behind it, and a country that catalogues at pack level will always out-count one that catalogues at product level. And manufacturer-name coverage varies by market: Mexico's registration records carry no manufacturer name at all, so any read of who is present there rests on inference and is a floor rather than a total.
This is not regulatory advice. Verify against the relevant authority before making a filing decision.