Automotive industry location trends in Mexico
During the first week of the present month, executives representing manufacturing firms interested in examining the possibility of establishing low-cost, near shore manufacturing operations met at MexicoNow magazine’s Mexico Industrial & Logistics Location Summit in the nation’s capital.
While some speakers in attendance addressed the topic in general industry terms, one presentation was made during the Summit on the subject of automotive industry location trends in Mexico.
In recent years, the nation has been the focus of industry attention due to the prodigious amount of foreign direct investment that has poured into the country from European, Asian, and, NAFTA partner countries the United States and Canada, that has made Mexico one of the world’s leading exporters of passenger and light vehicles.
Fausto Cuevas, the general director of the Mexican Association of Automotive Industries, or AMIA, provided attendees with:
- a statistical overview of the numbers that illustrate the growing size of the automotive industry in Mexico, and a sense of its importance in the context of the overall manufacturing economy of the country;
- a visual orientation of the geographical locations of automotive OEM assembly plants, research centers and industry test tracks in Mexico;
- an idea of the importance that current automotive industry location trends play in the context of overall manufacturing FDI attracted by Mexico.
Cuevas also spoke of automotive location industry trends in Mexico as they relate to comparative worker remuneration, as they relate to production and exports, as well as their relationship to Mexico’s overall balance of trade. According to information provided by the general director of AMIA, in “2013 the automotive trade balance” was in excess US $38 billion. He also pointed out that, during the same year, the dollar value of automotive industry exports approached two times the that of crude oil shipments overseas, while they were more than three times the income that Mexico received as a result of remittances made by overseas workers.
The presenter went on to explain that automotive industry location trends in Mexico are driven by a number of factors that are comprised of:
- the country’s geographical location
- the network of free trade networks in place that makes Mexico unparalleled as an export platform
- a developed industry supply chain that has been more than thirty years in the making
- a skilled, qualified, educated and young workforce
The automotive industry location trends in Mexico that, in recent years, have made the country an opportunity for suppliers at the Tier 1, Tier 2 and Tier 3 levels, have also driven job growth primarily in the South Central Mexico states such as Aguascalientes, Guanajuato, Queretaro, San Luis Potosi and Celaya.
LINK BELOW TO PRESENTATION:
