Canarias Expande supports Canary Island SMEs that want to sell beyond their own island or beyond the archipelago. IBC Spain has delivered two consecutive editions of the programme, each with a different Chamber of Commerce and a different scope.
2025: 26 SMEs across the four islands of the province
Awarded through public tender by the Santa Cruz de Tenerife Chamber of Commerce, the programme consisted of tailored mentoring in regionalisation, internationalisation and foreign trade for the 26 beneficiary companies, spread across the four islands of the province: Tenerife, La Palma, La Gomera and El Hierro. Between five and eight sessions per company, with a first and a final visit on site, and an internationalisation or regionalisation plan written for each one.
The sectors had little in common — aluminium joinery, cheesemaking, mojo and almogrote sauces, wineries, invoicing software, cybersecurity, designer jewellery, holiday rentals, photovoltaic engineering — and that forced every plan to be different: some companies were heading for mainland Spain, others for West Africa, Chile, Italy or the DACH region, and for several of them the right answer was the island next door.
Three workshops and one trade mission
The programme included three in-person training sessions: one on market intelligence with AI, in Costa Adeje, and two on regionalisation, logistics and the Canary Islands indirect tax (IGIC) for selling into mainland Spain, in La Gomera and Los Llanos de Aridane.
It closed with a trade mission to Gran Canaria. A commercial dossier was prepared in advance and six companies were selected against criteria set beforehand — presence on non-capital islands, engagement during the programme and genuine progress made. The result was 29 B2B meetings with 22 Gran Canaria partners: distributors, service companies, business support bodies and institutions. The event was postponed because of a storm and rescheduled for 4 December without losing a single meeting.
2026: digitalisation and AI with the Gran Canaria Chamber
The following edition changed both island and content: a digitalisation and artificial intelligence track with 15 companies, each starting from a diagnostic questionnaire from which its own work plan is drawn. This is not training in the abstract: it means sitting down with the company and working out which part of its operations can be automated and which part is not worth automating.
What it leaves behind
Each company keeps its plan and a digital workbook holding the minutes, the analyses and the AI tools used along the way, so that it can consult and update the work without depending on the consultant. Many of the plans were also drafted so that they could serve as supporting documentation for applications for public internationalisation funding.
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