Plastic parts make up 50% of the volume and 10% of the weight of today's cars.
Mexico’s automotive supply chain continues to grow, evidence of which can be seen in the investments that have poured into the plastics industry in the first nine months of the year.
The Economy Secretariat reports that foreign direct investment in the national plastic sector totaled US $548.4 million, up 20% over the same period last year. For the past five years, the total comes to some $4 billion, with most of it concentrated in just five states.
The high-resistance plastic parts are supplying the automotive industry for the most part, but aerospace and technology firms are also customers. Among the customers are companies such as Bombardier, Grupo Safran, Nissan and Audi.
Plastic manufacturers include Grupo Kostal, ABC Group, Toyoda Gosei and Technimark, and are found primarily in the Federal District and the states of Puebla, Querétaro, Baja California and Nuevo León, where their customers are.
The Federal District has benefited most from the investments over the past five years, taking 34% of the total.
One of those automotive industry suppliers has just announced it will build its second injection moulding plant in Mexico. Monaco-based Mecaplast has operated a plant in Puebla since 2002, where it builds body parts.
The factory in Silao, Guanajuato, will focus more on engine parts, and export part of its production to the United States and Canada, said the company’s Philippe Vayssettes.
The new plant will be operational in 2017 and will be located near General Motors, Volkswagen, Honda and Mazda manufacturing facilities.
The increase in plastics manufacturers is expected to bring an increase as well in petrochemical manufacturing investment, depending on how energy reform unfolds, says Miguel Benedetto of the National Chemical Industry Association.
More of the resins used to make plastic parts could be produced domestically, he said.
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