About

Florida Ice & Farm Company (FIFCO) is a Costa Rican food and beverages company with a catalogue of over 2,000 products sold in over 15 countries. FIFCO has operations in Costa Rica, Panama, Nicaragua, the US and Guatemala and also participates in other Central American and Caribbean markets. FIFCO’s legal team is led by legal director and general counsel, Mariel Picado who has been with the company for 12 years. Under her management the legal function at FIFCO moved from a model that was excessively reliant on external law firms for all legal service provisions and with minimal oversight by senior managers, to an in-house model predicated on providing strategic legal advice to senior executives of the company. Considered ‘true business experts’ Picado concedes, ‘there is a true spirit of partnership and authenticity that permeates everything the members of the team do, which is both a praise to all of their individual qualities, and a result of our internal structure’. The team is also responsible for the simplification and efficiency of FIFCO’s legal processes in addition to incorporating “SERVILEX”, a highly innovative system which ensures all legal service transactions are executed with minimum error. The team’s impressive provision of legal advice has allowed them to step outside of a purely legal role and even be impactful on FIFCO strategically. The team played an invaluable role in FIFCO’s recent expansion processes, including the execution of eight acquisition transactions, which have opened FIFCO up to new markets and facilitated greater production capabilities.