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It oxygenates the motor so that combustion is more efficient, lowering gas emissions and saving gas. This is the main sales pitch made by Ricardo Aldana, the mechanical engineer who patented an ecological valve that is being used in vehicles in Chile and Bolivia.
For the last three years, this Bogota-based entrepreneur has been selling his invention through his company Marclais to a Chilean importer that buys used vehicles in Japan and exports them to Bolivia. Close to eight thousand valves have already been exported, and he is searching for more international markets for his product. Together with PROCOLOMBIA, he has already identified Mexico as one of the potential destinations.
" The best decision was to patent it. At the beginning there were very few sales, because nobody believed that a Colombian could develop automotive technologies,&rdquo said the engineer during the most recent business conference on auto parts organized by PROCOLOMBIA, with 34 international buyers in Bogota.
Conscious of a global trend towards clean technologies, Aldana created his first model as his thesis for his degree from the University of Los Andes. " When I finished university, since I didn&rsquo t have much money, I had to work in the automotive sector. I was financing my company, and I bought some machines while working nights in the yard at my parents&rsquo house, building and assembling auto parts,&rdquo he explained.
By putting his heart and soul into car motors, he identified improvements that could be made to the original designs. That&rsquo s how he got his patent, the main function of which is to inject air into the motor when you step on the accelerator in order to aid the combustion process at altitudes where there is little oxygen. His target customers live in cities with altitudes above 1,000 meters.
Chile was an ideal market for his product. A PROCOLOMBIA study found that one of the area&rsquo s main characteristics was that it doesn&rsquo t have its own assemblers, and therefore all automobiles are imported from Asia, Brazil and Argentina, creating demand for auto part repairs, especially in the mining, public transportation and forestry sectors.
" One of the main factors that determines the success of an export, first, is knowledge of the sector that it is aimed at in order to offer solutions, whether with a new product or with a new innovation or by adding value. Secondly, you have to understand the main needs of the market and the way those needs can be satisfied. When businessmen or businesswomen are able to accomplish those two steps, they find that exporting is growing in competitiveness,&rdquo explained María Claudia Lacouture, president of PROCOLOMBIA Colombia.
Now, with the confidence of having his product patented, Aldana has set his sights on getting more clients abroad. " You have to think big, you have to get on the foreign trade train, be international, generate wealth, employment for the country and social wellbeing.&rdquo
His plan is already underway. For being an innovative entrepreneur and having a business project with potential for rapid and sustainable growth, Marclais won a call for proposals held by Innpulsa, and is participating in a commercial mission that PROCOLOMBIA is organizing in Chile.
PROCOLOMBIA found that Colombian auto parts could be exported to 28 markets, mainly in the Americas, starting with Canada and followed by the United States, Mexico, Netherlands Antilles, Aruba, Barbados, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Costa Rica, El Salvador, Ecuador, Guatemala, Guyana, Haiti, Honduras, Panama, Paraguay, Peru, Puerto Rico, the Dominican Republic, and Trinidad and Tobago.
In Europe there is also potential in Germany, Sweden, Russia, the Netherlands, France and Portugal.
