For the Tijuana Economic Development Council the breadth, scope and quality of its city’s medical device industry is nothing to be kept secret.

The 8th Annual Congress of Latin American Clusters (CLAC) took place in the Colombian city of Medellin last month. At that event, the president of the Consejo de Desarrollo Económico de Tijuana, or, in English, the Tijuana Economic Development Council (TEDC), Humberto Inzunza, provided the Latin American economic developers in attendance with an informational overview of the prominent place that medical device manufacturing in Tijuana plays on that industry’s global stage.

In line with comments made by the president of the Tijuana Economic Development Council at the 2015 CLAC event, Tijuana is home to one of the most, if not the most, sophisticated medical device manufacturing clusters in the world. The City of Tijuana and the State of Baja California have the largest concentration of medical device companies in Mexico, and are followed in descending order by other Mexican
entities that include:

  • Jalisco
  • Nuevo Leon
  • Chihuahua
  • Coahuila
  • Sonora

A wide diversity of products that runs the gamut from disposables to electronics to delicate stents and pacemakers are turned out by Tijuana and Baja California’s medical device manufacturing production plants, and skilled and experienced members of its labor force.

During the Medellin event, he also announced that the site of the 10th Annual CLAC gathering in 2017 will take place in the City of Tijuana. According to Inzunza, the meeting would draw  “representatives from among the approximately five hundred maquiladora manufacturing plants that make the city their home.”

In national terms, Mexico is the 8th largest exporter of medical products in the world. Most of the production flowing from Mexican plants finds its way to the US and Latin American markets throughout the hemisphere. Medical device manufacturing in Tijuana, which has become Mexico’s main hub for production of this class of products, dates back to the 1980s, when a firm called Nellcor located there. The company was acquired by Covidien and, subsequently, became a holding of Medtronic, Inc. when the two were combined under the  Medtronic plc name in January
of 2015. Shares began trading on the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) under the symbol “MDT” on Tuesday, January 27, 2015.

The Tijuana Economic Development Council is an organization that receives its funding from both the public and the private sectors that focuses its attention on assessing the needs of Tijuana’s economy from a top-level, strategic perspective. Along with promoting the city as a desirable venue for investors to set down business roots in Baja California’s most economically dynamic city, the TECD makes analysis in important areas that impact the areas’ business dynamics and vibrancy such as infrastructure, workforce development requirements and legislation affecting commercial activities