The Port of Lázaro Cárdenas on Mexico’s Pacific coast will invest $617m to expand its capacity over the next six years to meet American companies’ growing demand for “nearshoring”, the Sol de México newspaper reports.
Nearshoring is the practice of moving production facilities to neighbouring countries with lower labour costs, and then exporting the goods to the domestic market.
The practice has bipartisan support in the US, largely because the factories are relocating from China to Mexico.
It led to a 29% increase in foreign direct investment in Mexico’s manufacturing sector last year, Foreign Policy magazine found.
María Agustina Álvarez, the marketing manager for the country’s National Port System Administration, said Lázaro Cárdenas would develop four major projects, all beginning between May and November next year and completing between 2027 and 2030.
Public and private investment
Lázaro Cárdenas is one of Mexico’s biggest ports. About a third of its traffic is taken up by containers, a third by mining products and uncontainerised cargos, and a third by cars.
The largest of the planned projects is La Isla de la Palma, set to have an intermodal terminal, industrial park and logistics area on 600ha of former government land.
Other projects involve building a dock and adding roads to improve communications with nearby cities Salamanca, Guadalajara and León.
Mexico’s new president Claudia Sheinbaum recently prioritised a link with the economic hub of Uruapan.
Alongside the public investment, seven projects are planned by private companies such as APM Terminals, Hutchinson Ports, and Hyundai.
APM, which owns the container terminal, completed the first phase of a $900m expansion programme in 2017. This made the port the first in Latin America to use the latest semi-autonomous technology for handling containers.
When work on the final phase is completed in 2030, the ports will be able to handle 4.1 million containers a year.
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