Mexico's Industry Grows Faster Than Its Operational Capacity

Mexico’s industrial growth is advancing on an infrastructure that is beginning to show its limits. The issue is not the inflow of investment or business confidence, but the speed at which factories, distribution centers, industrial parks, and housing are concentrating in a few corridors. Monterrey, Tijuana, Ciudad Juárez, Guadalajara, the Bajío region, and the route to Manzanillo are accumulating more production, goods, and workers. However, roads, public transportation, port access, and electrical grids do not always grow at the same pace. Mexico has learned to attract investment. Now, the challenge is to ensure that this investment can operate without losing competitiveness due to traffic, longer transit times, uncertain deliveries, and rising logistical costs.

58% of National Cargo Depends on Roads

The first sign of strain appears in the reliance on road transport. The Ministry of Infrastructure, Communications, and Transport (SICT) estimates that road transport moves 58% of national cargo. Furthermore, the freight vehicle fleet grew by 5.5% to reach 1,514,223 units in 2025, according to Inegi.

The number of vehicles is increasing, but a significant portion of operations continues to depend on the same main corridors, urban access routes, and connection points. This makes the supply chain particularly vulnerable. An accident, a repair, a protest, or a partial closure can halt a route used by automakers, suppliers, food companies, retailers, and distribution centers for hours.

For Mexican industry, congestion not only means late deliveries. It can also translate into:

• Increased fuel consumption.
• Unproductive hours for operators.
• Costs for maneuvers, security escorts, and overtime.
• The need to maintain safety stock inventories.
• The use of more units to cover the same volume of deliveries.
• Penalties for failing to meet receiving windows.
• Reduced reliability with national and international clients.

Therefore, a plant can increase its production capacity without truly improving its performance. If inputs arrive late or finished products take longer to ship, part of the profit generated within the factory is lost on the road.

Highway 57: Mexico’s Industrial Growth Converges on a Single Route

Federal Highway 57 clearly illustrates the problem. This artery connects the Mexico City metropolitan area with Querétaro, San Luis Potosí, Coahuila, and the northern border. It also feeds into the most important industrial corridors for Mexican industry in the Bajío region, where automotive, aerospace, logistics, and advanced manufacturing companies operate.

Its importance has also become a weakness, as too many supply chains depend on the same backbone. The construction of the Arco Norte-San Juan del Río bypass aims to relieve pressure on some of the most critical points. The project involves an estimated investment of 24.066 billion pesos and would allow approximately 13,500 vehicles per day to avoid part of Highway 57. Its execution is planned between 2026 and 2029, according to information disseminated by the Mexican Chamber of the Construction Industry (CMIC). The Federal Government has also included the 57D Arco Norte-San Juan del Río route and the La Pitahaya-Libramiento Noroeste de Querétaro connection in its highway modernization program.

Manzanillo Handles Nearly Four Million Containers and Prepares for Major Expansion

Logistical pressure in Mexican industry does not end on the roads. It also manifests at the points where foreign trade enters the country. The port of Manzanillo processed nearly four million twenty-foot equivalent units (TEUs) during 2024. In August 2025 alone, it set a monthly record of 346,257 TEUs, according to the Administration of the National Port System of Manzanillo. This activity supplies industrial and commercial chains located in Jalisco, Guanajuato, Querétaro, San Luis Potosí, Nuevo León, and central Mexico.

The challenge is not limited to unloading ships. Containers must leave the port, navigate urban access routes, and continue by road or rail. The expansion known as Nuevo Manzanillo aims to increase port capacity to approximately ten million TEUs annually by 2030. This project will allow for better assessment of future demand but necessitates looking beyond the docks.

However, a port with greater capacity requires roads, yards, customs facilities, bypasses, and rail connections capable of evacuating the additional volume. For this reason, the Federal Government is already working on the modernization of the Armería-Manzanillo highway, with partial deliveries expected in 2026. It also plans the Lagos de Moreno bypass, a relevant connection for traffic circulation between western Mexico and the Bajío.

Nuevo León and the Valley of Mexico Also Suffer from Saturation

In terms of regions, markets like Apodaca, Nuevo León, operate with occupancy levels between 96% and 97%, while in Aguascalientes, the availability of industrial warehouses is practically nil, according to an analysis by Spot2.mx. Meanwhile, the saturation of the Metropolitan Area of the Valley of Mexico (ZMVM) is converging with an average industrial rental price of $9.17 per square meter as of the first quarter of 2026 – the highest in the country. Thus, the Valley of Mexico faces physical limitations for expanding its industrial footprint and a base of corporate users who are no longer negotiating based on price, but on delivery times and logistical efficiency.

Guadalajara, Monterrey, and Tijuana Lose Up to 126 Hours Due to Traffic

The operation of industry in Mexico also depends on the mobility of people. A factory doesn’t run solely on inputs and machinery; it requires operators, technicians, engineers, supervisors, and transporters to arrive on time. The traffic index for 2025, conducted by the TomTom platform, shows that several of the country’s major industrial cities accumulated significant time losses during peak hours:

City	Congestion Level	Annual Hours Lost
Mexico City	75.9%	184
Guadalajara	63.3%	126
Monterrey	48.0%	89
León	42.5%	85
Tijuana	47.4%	72

The data is calculated based on two ten-kilometer trips per day during peak traffic hours. Guadalajara is particularly revealing. Its congestion level increased by 2.9 percentage points during 2025. Monterrey and Tijuana also registered deteriorations.

This time loss affects productivity in several ways. Companies must extend employee transport routes, advance work schedules, hire more vehicles, or pay overtime. Meanwhile, workers face shifts that, when added to commuting time, can far exceed their formal hours at the plant. Furthermore, when industrial parks are built far from residential areas and without adequate mass transit, companies reduce their effective hiring radius. Mobility, therefore, becomes a problem of talent, turnover, and absenteeism.

Logistical Costs Absorb 8.5% of Business Sales

Now, saturation also comes with a monetary cost. Javier Cendejas Meneses, president of the Mexican Business Council for Foreign Trade, Investment, and Technology, Northeast Chapter (Comce Noreste), points out that total logistics costs in Mexico can represent up to 60% of a company’s sales in saturated corridors, compared to the international standard of 35%. This means that for companies, these delays translate into increased fuel consumption, unproductive hours, precautionary inventories, more delivery vehicles, additional employee transport, and potential penalties for late deliveries.

The average can also hide very different realities. A large company can negotiate rates, automate warehouses, hire dedicated drivers, or distribute its inventory among several centers. A micro, small, or medium-sized enterprise (MSME), on the other hand, has less room to absorb an additional transit time, maintain precautionary stock, or pay for an urgent delivery. Therefore, logistical saturation does not affect everyone equally. Smaller companies end up paying proportionally more for the inefficiency of the territory.

Mercado Libre, Walmart, and DHL Expand Their Own Infrastructure

The decisions of large companies show that logistical capacity has become a strategic variable, but their expansion of logistics centers to bring inventories closer and reduce transit times puts pressure on existing infrastructure. Mercado Libre announced an investment of $4.6 billion during 2026, 35% more than the previous year. Part of this will be used to expand its logistics network in 19 states, in addition to strengthening its technology and financial services. The company plans to create 8,500 jobs and end the year with 42,000 employees. Walmart, for its part, announced $6 billion in investments during 2025. The plan included two next-generation distribution centers in the Bajío and Tlaxcala, equipped with robotics and artificial intelligence. These facilities would be added to the 21 centers the company already operated. DHL Supply Chain built a campus of over 200,000 square meters, distributed across four buildings, in Nextlalpan, near the Felipe Ángeles International Airport. The location allows for bringing inventories closer to the metropolitan area and diversifying logistical operating points.

Government to Allocate 5.6 Trillion Pesos to Infrastructure

The Federal Government has responded with the 2026-2030 Infrastructure Investment Plan for Development with Well-being. The strategy contemplates an additional 5.6 trillion pesos in public and mixed projects for energy, highways, railways, ports, airports, water, health, and education. For 2026, an additional 722 billion pesos were announced, equivalent to 2% of GDP. The Ministry of Finance stated that it analyzed over 1,500 projects to define the portfolio.

In terms of highways, the federal program amounts to 315.331 billion pesos. It includes:

• 113.347 billion to intervene on 2,485 kilometers of priority routes.
• 18.077 billion to build or modernize 29 kilometers of bridges.
• Approximately 1,000 kilometers of highways through mixed investment schemes.
• 50 billion to address 40,548 kilometers of toll-free federal highways.

As of April 2026, the Government reported 360 kilometers of construction or modernization completed, 4,500 kilometers repaved, and 78 bridges finished.

Can Infrastructure Sustain Mexico’s Coming Industrial Growth?

The answer is conditional. Mexico retains advantages that are difficult to replicate, such as proximity to the United States, manufacturing expertise, trade agreements, supplier networks, and a broad export base. However, nearshoring is not sustained solely by the availability of land or investment announcements. It requires energy, water, roads, border crossings, railways, housing, and transportation for workers.

If each state continues to compete to attract factories without calculating the capacity of its access routes, the country may end up dispersing plants while concentrating costs in the same corridors. Therefore, the next stage of industrial policy must evaluate each investment based on its complete operational impact, including how many workers it will move, how many cargo trips it will generate, what energy it will demand, through which port it will depart, and what alternative routes it will have in case of disruption.

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The entry first appeared on Líder Empresarial.