MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Punta Arenas and Falklands businesses hold more than 800 meetings

The event precedes a direct sea link using a Chilean-flagged vessel operated by Easter Island Naviera, which the company plans to launch between mid-November and the end of the year

Business people from Punta Arenas, in southern Chile, and from the Falklands held 822 business meetings over two days, at an event the organisers described as a success and which serves as a prelude to the reopening of a direct sea route between the Chilean city and Stanley, planned for the coming months.

The “Punta Arenas – The Islands Business Meeting” took place on Monday 28 and Tuesday 29 September at the Hotel Cabo de Hornos. It was organised by the Municipality of Punta Arenas and Chilean shipping company Easter Island Naviera, and brought together some 60 Magallanes companies and a delegation of 42 representatives from 32 companies and organisations in the archipelago, led by Louise Ellis, deputy managing director of the Falkland Islands Development Corporation. Sectors invited included food, cleaning products, cement, timber and spare parts. According to the organisers, several business people closed contracts, though no number was given.

“It has been a good couple of days; we are on a journey to connect the past with the future. We have worked with Punta Arenas and Magallanes for many decades. It was interrupted recently, but we hope to work again with old and new friends,” said Mike Summers, director of the Falkland Islands Chamber of Commerce and a former member of the Legislative Assembly. Ellis said there was interest on both sides in doing business.

The event precedes a direct sea link using a Chilean-flagged vessel operated by Easter Island Naviera, which the company plans to launch between mid-November and the end of the year. Its general manager, Pablo Pacheco, described it as a supply route “between private parties”. The mayor of Punta Arenas, Claudio Radonich, said the city aims to become the islands' “big supermarket”.

The Chilean government has called the initiative “a business between private parties”. Defence Minister Fernando Barros had said days earlier that Chile's support for Argentina's sovereignty claim does not imply restrictions on trade with the archipelago. According to the Chilean press, Argentina's foreign ministry followed the event closely; there was no official Argentine statement on it.

The new route would compete with supplies that currently reach the islands from Montevideo.