page_title: Mar del Plata
section_title: Economy
hierarchical_section_title: Mar del Plata / Economy
caption_attribution_description: Español: Playa La Perla, una de las principales playas de Mar del Plata, en plena temporada estival.
context_page_description: Mar del Plata is a city in Buenos Aires Province, Argentina located on the coast of the Atlantic Ocean. It is the head of General Pueyrredón Partido. Mar del Plata is the second largest city in Buenos Aires Province. The name "Mar del Plata" has the meaning of "sea of the Plate region" or "adjoining sea to the Plate region". Mar del Plata is one of the major fishing ports and the biggest seaside beach resort in Argentina.
  With a population of 614,350 as per the 2010 census [INDEC], it is the 7th largest city in Argentina.
context_section_description: As part of the Argentine recreational coast, tourism is Mar del Plata's main economic activity with seven million tourists visiting the city in 2006. Mar del Plata has a sophisticated tourist infrastructure with numerous hotels, restaurants, casinos, theatres and other tourist attractions. Mar del Plata is also an important sports centre with a multi-purpose Olympic style stadium (first used for the 1978 World Cup and later upgraded for the 1995 Pan American Games), five golf courses and many other facilities.
  As an important fishing port, industry concentrates on fish processing and at least two large shipyards.
  The area is also host to other light industry, such as textile, food manufacturing and polymers.
  There is a well-developed packaging machines industry, its quality being recognized in international markets. One of these companies was one of the pioneers in the automatic packaging of tea bags, exporting its original machine-designs abroad. Another company also exports its products and has sold royalties to other countries.
  During the mid-1980s, Mar del Plata saw the birth of electronics factories, focused mostly on the telecommunications field, with two of them,  Nexuscom and DelSat, succeeding in the international market. By the 2010s, a local technology company, PCBOX, was manufacturing and developing personal computers, tablet computers, smartphones and action-cams.
  Also during the decade of 2010, the development of the software industry resulted in the formation of 92 companies and 440 microbusiness. One of these companies, Making Sense, opened offices at San Antonio, Austin and Boston, in the United States. Along with the American COPsync, Inc, the company developed in 2013 the software for VidTac, an in-car video system for law enforcement, and the internet landing page application Lander, bought by the Silicon Valley company QuestionPro in 2016.
  Since the 2000s, a local company builds and develops oil industry equipment, with customers in the United States, Russia, Oman and Egypt.
  Located southwest of the city there are quartzite quarries. The stone is traditionally used in construction. There is a huge area of farms in the rural areas surrounding the city, specialized mostly in the cultivation of vegetables. In 2012, Mar del Plata became a wine-producing area, when a wine company from Mendoza province produced 20,000 lt from a vineyard at Chapadmalal beach from grape varieties such as Sauvignon blanc, Chardonnay, Riesling and Gewürztraminer. Since then, the local winery turned into a tourist attraction. Microbeweries flourished during the 2010s, amounting by 2016 to one third of the national production. 
  Although the area had suffered from a high rate of unemployment from 1995 to 2003, Mar del Plata has seen 46,000 new jobs created from the third quarter of 2003 to the third quarter of 2008, representing an increase of 22%.
  The 2008 Davis Cup Final was held in Mar del Plata and, after being shut for a decade the Gran Hotel Provincial (one of the largest hotels in Argentina) was reopened by the Madrid-based NH Hotels, in 2009.
  Mar del Plata continues to lead Argentina's room availability: of 440,000 registered hotel rooms nationwide in early 2009, the city was home to nearly 56,000 (5,000 more than Buenos Aires).
caption: One of the beaches of Mar del Plata during summer tourism season
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