PETpla.net Insider 10 / 2013

EDITOUR REPORTS 13 PET planet insider Vol. 14 No. 10/13 www.petpla.net We have arrived in Santiago. By “we”, I mean Team 2, consisting of my col- league Chiraz and me, Kay, and we are here to take over the Editourmobil from our colleagues in Team 1, Alex and Rolf. Immediately after the handover, our first task is to get to the Iveco workshop. The Editourmobil has suffered griev- ously on its journey over the Andes, and the engine is constantly stuttering and spluttering. Two of the Iveco mechanics take it on a test drive to see what’s wrong. They, and we, are in for a shock. Without warning, the vehicle stops on the motorway exit. The Editourmobil is as dead as a dodo, end of story. There’s nothing for it but to leave the vehi- cle to Iveco’s tender mercies, and make our way by taxi into the city, taking as much luggage as we can manage. For- tunately, Chiraz has a German friend in Santiago, and with her help, we locate a pleasant hotel where we spend the night. As an additional bonus, the hotel has a decent wifi so I am at least able to get a bit of work done. Next day, the first job is to get hold of Chilean SIM cards. Ominously, there is no news about the vehicle so it is a matter of waiting, and getting in touch with HQ in Heidelberg to establish some sort of Plan B for our upcoming appoint- ments. Then comes the news from Iveco that we had been dreading: the Edi- tourmobil’s transmission is completely knackered. No spare parts. Repair likely to take weeks. I feel sick to my stom- ach. Chiraz urges me to look on the Hall 9, stand 09A44 | 09A48 www.kreyenborg-bkg.com Screen changers. Melt pumps. Polymer valves. Underwater pelletizing systems. Centrifugal dryers. the heavy additional costs incurred by these two relatively expensive modes of transport which tend to be dispropor- tionately high by comparison to the rest of South America, even in Patagonia itself. Something like half the 17.5 million Chileans live within the conurbation zone encompassed by the capital, the greater Santiago de Chile area, which itself accounts for around 6 million inhabitants. Away from Santiago and both to the north and south, settlements tend to be few and far between. Turning to Argentina, we once again find a similar pat- tern of economic highs and lows that have marked the country, the second largest in Latin America after Brazil. The industrialisation of Argentina back in the 50s stripped away large parts of what had, up to that time, been a pre- dominantly agricultural economy. One significant change was the focus on the domestic market, so that the country, so to speak, was isolated from the outside world, with an economy that only looked inward. The country has a wealth of natural resources at its disposal along with deposits of oil and natural gas which are used in industrial applications. Different governments operated a strictly state-controlled economy right up to the beginning of deregulation and privatisation which began in the second half of the 70s. A military dictatorship and a huge rise in the national debt in 1976 resulted in multiple devaluations of the peso and led, after the reinstatement of democracy in 1983, to a period of hyperinflation, which President Carlos Menem halted in 1991 by putting the cur- rency at parity with the US dollar and thus making Argen- tina attractive to foreign investors once again. The result was an average growth of 5% between 1991 and 1996. However, the long term consequence of link- ing the peso and the UD dollar was to make Argentinian exports more expensive on the world market, whilst foreign imports became cheaper. This resulted in many manufac- turing plants throughout the country putting up the shut- ters. Consequently there was an increase in the imbalance