Wage figures can help with an initial comparison. The next step is to understand the experience available locally, how you would recruit those people and what preparation they would need for your operation.

These questions also help explain the value of a Manufacturing Campus. Tetakawi’s recruiting, employment administration and employee transportation services are already operating around the manufacturers on its Campuses. For a company entering Mexico, that provides an established organization to work with as it assesses, recruits and supports its workforce.

The work determines the skills you need

Take a CNC operator. In one plant, that person loads parts and runs an established program. In another, the same title includes setting up tooling, making adjustments and troubleshooting the process. Both jobs belong on a manufacturing floor, but they call for different experience, different pay and different training.

If you need someone who can set up and troubleshoot independently, look for that experience in the candidates you interview. If your team can teach those skills, someone experienced in running an established program may be a suitable starting point. That distinction changes both the recruiting search and the training your launch will require.

The same distinctions apply to a maintenance technician, a quality inspector or a production supervisor. The responsibilities in your existing plant provide a starting point, and these questions help a recruiting team understand the experience you need.

Those details give the local recruiting team something specific to search for.

How recruiting works on a Campus

Luis Ávila, Tetakawi’s Human Resources Manager in Saltillo, describes a recruiting process that starts with a requisition: you, supported by Tetakawi’s HR team, describe the activities and responsibilities of each position. Recruiters first consult candidate profiles that record people’s skills and experience, then search through local channels, including recruiting in the community and on social media.

That gives a new manufacturer access to a recruiting operation that is already running. Tetakawi presents candidates against the profile you requested, and you interview and select the people for your operation.

The same role requirements inform compensation guidance. Tetakawi advises on local salary and benefit expectations, and you decide the offer. Tetakawi’s manufacturing labor cost benchmarks can support an initial budget; the actual discussion needs to reflect the responsibilities and experience you are seeking.

This is the workforce side of the Campus model. On a Tetakawi Manufacturing Campus, you run your own factory. A Campus adds established industrial space, shared infrastructure and an on-site support organization. You control production, process and quality.

Transportation changes who you can recruit

A candidate’s experience matters only if the job is practically within reach. Employee transportation and shift schedules affect that, which is why the transportation around a building belongs in the location discussion.

In Saltillo, Ávila describes a transportation network that extends recruiting reach across Saltillo, Ramos Arizpe and Arteaga. For you, the practical question is how that network fits your proposed shifts. Existing routes may serve some requirements; others may need additional arrangements.

A location’s workforce assessment therefore needs to consider both the candidates’ experience and their ability to reach the plant. A large surrounding population alone cannot establish that fit.

Hiring dates and production readiness are different

The day someone joins and the day they can do the work are separate milestones. A supervisor who needs to learn your process before supporting the first operators has to enter the plan earlier than those operators. That preparation affects the recruiting date, the availability of experienced instructors and the timing of subsequent hires.

Your team provides instruction on your equipment, processes and quality standards. Tetakawi supports recruiting and employment administration and provides induction on employment terms. Plan those activities together so each group arrives when your team can train it.

With those requirements identified, recruiting can work toward the sequence your launch needs, and you can see where your own preparation affects the date people become ready for production. The wider launch sequence, from the building to the equipment, is covered in what a Campus already has ready when you launch.

The support continues as the plant grows

Tetakawi’s HR team supports your operation and coordinates with other Campus departments when an issue needs their involvement. It reviews turnover and absenteeism with your plant’s management, proposes actions and evaluates the results with you. Recruiting reviews also track open positions and whether the offer remains appropriate for the role. Workplace climate surveys give the team another way to identify issues that need attention.

When the plant adds capacity, you can work with the existing recruiting, HR and transportation organization on the additional requirements. Those may include supervisors and technical support as well as operators, together with arrangements for the new shifts.

Recruiting, employment and payroll for the people you select run through Tetakawi’s Mexican operations, as part of its HR and payroll administration. You see and approve the payroll before it runs. You decide who is hired and who stays.

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A Tetakawi Manufacturing Campus is an industrial site in Mexico where you run your own factory. A Campus adds established industrial space, shared infrastructure and an on-site support organization. You control production, process and quality. Tetakawi’s teams support the facilities, workforce, logistics and compliance that let the operation take shape and grow.

So the comparison that matters is not the rent per square foot. It is what comes with each building, what remains to be installed, and who will support the operation after move-in.

What is the difference between an industrial park and a Manufacturing Campus?

Industrial parks vary in the buildings, infrastructure and services they provide. Manufacturers can assemble additional support through their own teams, outside providers or a shelter arrangement. On a Tetakawi Campus, facilities, recruiting, employment administration, trade and compliance teams already support the manufacturers on the site: five Campuses, in Sonora, Sinaloa and Coahuila, with 60+ manufacturers running their own plants on them. The decision is how much of that operating organization your company wants to establish and coordinate itself.

The building: what comes with it, and what remains to be installed

Two buildings with the same square footage can be very different starting points. What comes with the space decides how much investment, construction and coordination sit between you and the day your equipment can go in. A listing may show air conditioning, ventilation or an electrical substation as items to be configured for the manufacturer; each has to become a scope, a price and a delivery date before that building can be compared fairly with one that already has them.

Javier Mockabee, Tetakawi’s Director of Infrastructure, describes what a standard Campus building includes when a client arrives: tilt-up concrete walls and an insulated roof, a reinforced concrete floor, standard loading docks, offices, restrooms and a lunchroom, standard air conditioning and lighting, and power, water, sewer and fiber delivered to the building’s perimeter or main connection point. A standard building runs to about 35,000 square feet. The quantities, coverage and capacity are set out in the specification of the building you select, and that specification is the document to compare.

Power is where the comparison usually turns. Capacity available to a development, capacity connected to a building and power distributed to each machine are three different things. The capacity delivered to a Campus building is a figure in its specification, in kVA; compare it with what your equipment draws, and ask what work connects the two. Connectivity belongs in the same picture: the Campus carries infrastructure for internet, voice and data, and fiber reaches the building, so your IT team plans the plant’s connection to corporate systems around a service that exists.

Then come the improvements specific to your process: a machine’s own power drop, compressed air, extra cooling, a controlled environment. Mockabee’s team scopes and coordinates that work with you and with qualified subcontractors, priced separately, and he puts it at two to four months for a standing building, depending on the complexity of the internal systems and on lead times for items such as high-capacity transformers.

So the useful question for each building on your list is this: what will it take to bring it to the same operating condition? A lower headline rent can arrive with higher fit-out costs and a longer startup schedule. Count both, and the management time to run them. Then ask the question that carries past move-in: who maintains that environment, and who helps you expand in it?

On a Campus the first half of that answer is in place. Tetakawi’s engineers prepare the preventive-maintenance schedules for the base building and send them to you for validation; its technicians, electricians, air-conditioning specialists and plumbers carry out the work, with daily inspections between. Mockabee, Tetakawi’s Director of Infrastructure, describes the division of labor with a client’s plant manager in one line: “They focus on the product and we focus on the infrastructure.” Your team stays responsible for its production equipment; the industrial space and facilities page sets out the rest.

This is also why a Campus launch moves sooner into preparing production. Choosing an available, existing building removes the need to construct the factory shell. Included offices, standard cooling and lighting reduce the base fit-out, while process-specific improvements are scoped around your equipment and production requirements. For a well-prepared operation whose requirements fit an available building, a Campus can be ready for your equipment in as little as 30 days; in Tetakawi’s experience, setting up this way typically takes three to six months to that point. When production begins depends on installation, training and your customer’s approvals, and what a Campus already has ready walks through how those milestones fit together.

The workforce: turning a location into production capacity

For Consolidated Precision Products the reason to expand was customer demand, and the constraint was people. CPP already ran a standalone plant in Ensenada and a plant on Tetakawi’s Roca Fuerte Campus in Guaymas; when it needed a third site, for non-destructive testing and repair of aerospace and defense castings, its experience in Guaymas informed the decision to work with Tetakawi again.

Jeremy Main, CPP’s Senior Vice President, puts labor availability and access to technical talent at the center of the choice of Mazatlán: less competition for people than in the border cities, and technical schools whose graduates could learn the aerospace work quickly. The building had to support that work too. Main says it was not an open shell: Tetakawi worked with CPP to put the utilities where its specialized processes needed them and to make room for the special equipment it wanted to install. CPP trained its first Mazatlán hires at its own plants in Guaymas, Ensenada and Minneapolis for eight months before volume production began, and those people came back as the trainers for the next group. CPP’s own account tells the rest.

A promising labor market becomes productive capacity through recruiting, training and a building prepared for the work. Tetakawi’s workforce teams bring local recruiting and pay information together with employment administration, Campus buses and preventive medical services, with employment running through Tetakawi’s Mexican operations. Your managers define the roles, interview and select the candidates and direct their work. So alongside population and wage data, ask of any park how the roles you need will be filled, how people will reach the plant, and how hiring will adapt when your production plan changes.

Logistics and compliance: supporting the flow of production

Distance to the border is a starting point. The operating plan also has to account for what moves, how often, and the information that travels with it; a machine arriving for installation has different handling and paperwork from a weekly shipment of components. On a Campus, import and export runs daily under the program and site authorizations the Campus already holds, with the importer and exporter of record on Tetakawi’s side of the arrangement. Your purchasing, engineering and production teams provide the part and shipment information; Tetakawi’s trade team uses it to coordinate movements and maintain the required records. The question for any park is who sits with your team to do that.

Compliance is easier to manage when the people responsible understand the operation before it starts. Your process, equipment and materials decide which requirements apply, and a new activity may need an authorization of its own. On a Campus, Tetakawi’s compliance, EHS and fiscal teams review the activity you plan to run, coordinate the applications it needs and keep the recurring filings current after launch, with the responsibilities set early and people assigned to carry them. Your team supplies the operating information and applies the requirements within the plant, working with Tetakawi’s specialists as the process develops.

An operating organization that supports your next stage of growth

Consider a plant preparing to add a second shift. Recruiting needs the staffing plan. The bus routes have to match the new hours. HR needs the schedule and the employment paperwork. Facilities may have to move its maintenance windows. Higher output changes the volume and timing of shipments. Each department has a task, and someone has to coordinate the decisions between them.

That coordination is what a Campus provides: Tetakawi’s teams work with your managers inside one established relationship, a project leader during the launch and Campus management after it. The economics follow from the same fact. One plant draws on recruiting, trade, facilities and compliance capabilities that serve many operations on the site, so it has the reach of a large organization without building each function from scratch. The result should show in the plant manager’s week: clear contacts, defined responsibilities and more time on production and on developing the team.

The value keeps compounding when the first building starts to fill. At the Bella Vista Campus in Empalme, TE Connectivity has operated with Tetakawi since 1989 and has grown to three plants. Ricardo Gómez, Director of Operations for TE Auto and Power, describes Tetakawi bringing available buildings to TE’s attention as opportunities to expand, while continuing to support the facilities, the maintenance and the recruiting. When TE needs more people, he says, Tetakawi widens the recruiting as far as 100 kilometers north or south of the plant, with buses and employee services behind it.

For a growing manufacturer that continuity is the point. Adding capacity on the same Campus means the facilities team already knows the operation, recruiting already knows its roles, and the trade and compliance teams already work with its managers. Expansion still needs a plan, with space, utility capacity, hiring and any process-specific work in it, and the time to raise it is while you evaluate the first building: ask what space options your agreement provides for.

Through all of it your factory keeps its own management and culture. You direct production and own your process knowledge; your team sets the quality standards and develops the capabilities your customers depend on; Tetakawi supports the employment, facilities and administrative work around the plant. A Campus gives your company shared support while the factory inside it develops its own identity and its own way of working.

Compare the complete operating proposal

A price per square foot compares property. A manufacturing location needs a wider view of the work each proposal includes. Put the same production requirements and growth assumptions to each option on your shortlist, and establish the following before you commit.

Set out this way, a Campus can be weighed against an equivalent scope, and the exercise shows whether your own organization is ready to carry what another option leaves with you. A company with an established Mexican operation and a full local team may need something different from one building its first plant; an experienced manufacturer adding a site may still choose a Campus because it wants the next plant to inherit an organization already in place, which is what CPP did.

Tetakawi runs the Campus model on five Manufacturing Campuses in Mexico: Río Sonora in Hermosillo, Roca Fuerte in Guaymas, Bella Vista in Empalme, Mazatlán and Zapa in Saltillo. Tell us the process, the footprint and the date, and we will show you where it fits. How the Campus compares with the other ways to manufacture in Mexico is set out separately.

Make the site visit an operating discussion. Walk the building with the people who will prepare and maintain it. Meet the recruiting and trade teams. Describe the next product or shift you expect to add and ask how the Campus would support that expansion. You should leave with a clearer view of the factory you can build and the organization that will help you run it.

Common questions

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Since July 24, 2026, a U.S. Section 301 action has applied an additional 10% duty to many products of Mexico. Goods that enter duty free under a USMCA claim are exempt. Goods covered by Section 232, such as steel, aluminum, copper, vehicles and auto parts, are excluded from the Section 301 duty, and their Section 232 treatment applies instead. A business case that assumes duty-free entry is assuming a qualification someone still has to check.

That check is worth doing early, and it can sharpen the opportunity. A product that qualifies, and is properly entered under the agreement’s preference, enters the United States free of the ordinary duty. Section 232 or antidumping duties can still apply. A product that falls short may qualify with a sourcing or process change. That change is easier to make on paper than after the line is built. Customs due diligence gives you the answer while the plan can still move.

USMCA compliance depends on the product, not the plant

Start by defining the production plan. Identify the finished products, the components they contain and the manufacturing steps planned for Mexico. If the project covers a new line or selected North American volume, use that scope rather than treating the whole company as one case.

A description such as “assembly in Mexico” leaves the important questions open. Explain what arrives at the plant, what happens to it there and what leaves as the finished product. Where products or variants use different materials or processes, describe each one.

For exports to the United States, a USMCA claim depends on whether the finished product meets the agreement’s rules of origin. Those rules allow materials from outside North America when the product meets its product-specific rule. That rule is listed by the finished product’s tariff classification. Depending on the product, it can require the outside materials to change tariff classification, a minimum regional value content, a specific process, or a combination. Vehicles and auto parts carry additional requirements.

So a Chinese component does not settle the answer by itself. The work that turns those materials into the finished product must happen entirely in the United States, Mexico or Canada, but that does not settle it either. The product and its rule need to be reviewed together.

And USMCA origin is not the only origin question. Separate U.S. country-of-origin rules decide how the goods are marked and whether country-specific duties such as Section 301 apply, and those rules use their own tests. A product shipped from Mexico can still be treated as a product of another country under them. A label such as “assembled in Mexico” settles neither question, which is one more reason to describe the actual process carefully.

Inputs, production and export each need an answer

Customs questions come up at three points in the production flow:

Keep all three in the business case. USMCA compliance for the finished product does not answer every question about importing its inputs into Mexico.

Since January 1, 2026, Mexico has charged higher general import duties on many goods from countries without a trade agreement with Mexico. Inputs from those countries need their own review. A temporary import under IMMEX does not settle that on its own. When the finished goods are exported to the United States or Canada, USMCA limits how much Mexican duty on inputs from outside North America can be waived or refunded.

Record the date of the analysis and the assumptions behind it. USMCA remains in force, and its current term runs to 2036. It was not extended at the July 2026 joint review, and the three countries now review it every year. If your investment decision takes several months, confirm the treatment again before the next commitment. If the economics hinge on an open question, ask your team to model each likely answer.

What a review needs, and who holds it

The first conversation can start with your product and your plans. A detailed review needs a fuller picture. Agree on confidentiality before you share sensitive product information.

Treat this as a starting list. Your reviewer will confirm what your products need. Flag gaps early so they can be filled or noted as a limit on the findings.

That same information later supports the claim itself. Under USMCA, the importer, the exporter or the producer can complete the certification of origin. It has no prescribed format, but it must include a minimum set of details the agreement lists. Whoever claims or certifies keeps the supporting records for at least five years, and U.S. Customs can verify a claim after entry. The importer that makes the claim answers for it, whoever signed the certification.

Change the plan while it is still on paper

A useful review says which products it covered, what it found and what is still open. If a conclusion depends on a supplier statement or a specific process step, the review says so right beside it.

Then connect the findings to the decision. Does the current plan support the expected economics? Would a different source for a material justify a closer look? Is a proposed production step still worth it once its equipment, staffing and quality requirements are counted?

Test each change with the people who would make it: purchasing and quality for a new source, engineering for a new process step. Then show finance which costs and assumptions moved, so the business case reflects the plan you would actually build.

Keep the answer true after launch

Once the project moves ahead, the approved product information has to reach the people responsible for shipments and customs records. Decide who provides it, who reviews it and how later changes will be communicated.

Consider a component substitution. Purchasing finds a suitable replacement, and engineering approves its performance. Your trade team still needs the updated information to judge whether the change affects the origin analysis or the records used for shipments. Not every substitution changes the result, but every one should reach the people who can tell.

That same discipline connects the production schedule to the logistics plan. Equipment arriving for installation and components arriving for production can have different documentation and handling needs. Plan those movements against the installation and production dates.

What Tetakawi handles, and what stays with you

Tetakawi has helped companies manufacture in Mexico since 1986. On a Tetakawi Manufacturing Campus, you run your own factory. You control production, process and quality. A Campus adds established industrial space, shared infrastructure and an on-site support organization. Tetakawi provides the agreed supporting work.

Two Campus services matter most here. The first is logistics infrastructure. Equipment imports are planned with your carriers alongside the building schedule, and cross-docks in Tucson and McAllen serve the Campuses nearest to them. Before you sign, the Campus trade team works with you and the customs broker on which of your products may need a special permit.

The second is import and export operations. In Mexico, the importer and exporter of record is on Tetakawi’s side of the arrangement; entering the United States, your company is. Tetakawi’s team builds your customs record from the part data you supply and updates it with the changes you report. The Annex 24 guide explains how that inventory record ties temporary imports to production.

That record is where the component substitution above shows up. You report the change, Tetakawi’s team updates the Mexican record, and your trade team can judge whether it affects the origin analysis.

Start with the operation you want to build

For companies considering Mexico, or a new line there, Tetakawi offers this review as part of its Mexico due diligence. We work through the customs and trade questions around the proposed operation with your team, your customs broker and your advisors: the finished product, its major inputs and where they come from, and how goods will move. The aim is to get the plan right before you commit, so the customs answers are known going in rather than discovered after launch.

It starts with a conversation about the product, the work you intend to perform in Mexico and the markets you need to serve. From there, we agree what the review should cover for your project.

Frequently Asked Questions

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To answer them you need an operating model that fits the work, a clear list of what the new operation has to demonstrate, and a launch and operating plan your operations, quality and finance leaders can each test. Here is how to put each one together.

Define the work the Mexico operation will do

Start with the work itself, because the later decisions depend on it: the part family or process the plant will run, the volumes in the first year and at full rate, the equipment, the skills that equipment demands, and the date your program or customer needs parts.

Then decide what kind of project this is. Transferring existing production moves work your customers already accept from a U.S. plant, often with some of the same equipment. Adding capacity can mean making an existing part at a second location while your current plant keeps supplying it. A new program may make the Mexican site the first source for that work. The three share most of the work, some projects mix them, and each treats delivery, approvals and cost differently.

Where the program allows it, starting with a defined part family or process can make the first launch easier to manage. Choose that scope against customer demand, process readiness and the business case, and confirm that later phases still support the delivery schedule the program needs.

Choose how you will operate in Mexico

The first decision is whether to buy parts or make them. A contract manufacturer makes your parts on its own floor, under its own quality system, and your customers’ requirements decide what it has to show before those parts ship. It can fit when the work matches its processes and capacity, when you can accept less day-to-day control, and when the commercial terms work (Tetakawi vs contract manufacturing).

If you run your own plant, the second decision is how to hold it in Mexico. With your own Mexican company, you form the entity and get its registrations and import authorizations. Your company then stays responsible for the labor, legal and administrative work as well as the plant, whether your own team does it or you hire advisers and service providers. Under a shelter arrangement, you run the plant while a provider’s Mexican company holds the import program and, in the usual arrangement, employs the workforce. What providers include varies, so read the scope (shelter vs standalone).

So in both of those routes production is yours. What changes is who carries the work around it.

Tetakawi provides that arrangement on five Manufacturing Campuses in Sonora, Sinaloa and Coahuila, where more than 15 aerospace manufacturers operate. A Campus adds established industrial space, shared infrastructure and an on-site support organization. You control production, process and quality. Tetakawi is not a contract manufacturer. Here is how aerospace manufacturing in Mexico works on a Tetakawi Campus.

Establish what the new site’s quality system and approvals require

Adding or moving aerospace work raises separate questions, each with its own owner.

Your quality system. It governs how the new plant makes, inspects and releases parts, and it stays your company’s responsibility when you run the plant. Decide early whether the Mexican plant runs under your existing system or its own, and who leads quality there.

Certification scope. An AS9100 certificate you already hold does not cover a new plant in Mexico on its own. Certificates are issued by accredited certification bodies under the International Aerospace Quality Group’s rules, and each one lists the sites and scope it covers. Ask your certification body how the new site and its work will be added, what audits that takes and when the updated certificate can be issued.

Process accreditation. Nadcap is an industry-run program, administered by the Performance Review Institute (PRI), that accredits suppliers for specific processes, for example heat treating, chemical processing and nondestructive testing. Your customers’ requirements decide whether a process at the new plant needs it. If one does, confirm with PRI and those customers what the site needs before you schedule that work there.

Customer acceptance. Your customers decide what they need to see before accepting parts from a new location. Their quality terms can require, for instance, a new first article inspection when the location of manufacture changes in a way that could affect form, fit or function, and some customers also approve or audit the site. Where those terms require approved sources for outside processes, the new site’s suppliers have to meet them too.

Tetakawi’s shelter arrangement does not give your operation certification coverage or customer acceptance; those stay part of your own launch plan. A Campus does not replace the reviews they call for or guarantee the date your customer accepts parts, though preparation and execution on the ground affect how ready everything else is when those reviews happen. The same holds in any industry, as what a Campus speeds up and what it can’t explains.

Build the launch and operating case

The date that matters is when the new site can deliver parts your customer accepts, and an available building is only the start of it.

Consider a hypothetical supplier moving an existing aluminum machining cell to Mexico. An available building gives the team a place to assess. The team still has to check power and foundations for each machine and recruit machinists and inspectors. It has to decide where anodizing and penetrant inspection will happen, and find out what the customer requires before accepting parts from the new site. And if the same machines are moving, the plan has to show how deliveries continue while they are in transit.

Facility and equipment. List what each machine and inspection station needs before it arrives, for example foundations, power, compressed air and temperature control for inspection. Then decide which machines move and which are bought, their lead times, and how long installation and capability runs take before the first qualification parts.

People. Build the hiring plan by role and date, from machinists, inspectors and maintenance technicians to the plant and quality leaders. Then plan training by role, including the skills to be demonstrated, the time required and where training will take place.

Suppliers and logistics. For each material and outside process, decide where it comes from during start-up and where it should come from later. A nearby processor joins the plan once it meets the requirements that apply to that work. Then map how material and parts move, including the customs paperwork for each crossing.

Delivery continuity. For transferred work, decide how deliveries continue while equipment moves and the new site gets ready. Depending on the project, that can mean building inventory ahead, moving equipment in phases, running both sites in parallel or using another approved source. Say in the plan what happens if the new site is accepted later than planned. For added capacity, work out how much demand your current operation can cover during the ramp. For a new program, match the new site’s readiness to the date your customer needs parts. In each case, write the backup plan down. The International Aerospace Quality Group’s supply chain handbook treats moving work between sites as something to manage in planned stages, and notes that transfers often cause schedule and quality problems when they are not adequately managed.

Costs and ramp. Keep two numbers apart for finance: the cash it takes to set the operation up, and the cost of running it. Setting up can take equipment and its installation, changes to the building, training, qualification work, inventory, and a period when both sites carry cost during a transfer. Running costs include labor and benefits, space, utilities, maintenance, support services, materials, outside processing and freight, plus the taxes and duties that apply to the operation. Then put the production assumptions into the model: staffing, machine hours, cycle time, yield and scrap. Compare the expected cost of each accepted part at planned output, and test what happens if volume builds more slowly or your customer accepts parts later.

Check processes, space and export control early

Some constraints can change the evaluation, so check them before the plan is far along.

Processes near the site. A region can have the capability you need without a plant that can take your work; Mexico’s aerospace clusters shows what each region makes. A nearby processor counts once it is qualified for your process, meets your customers’ requirements and has capacity; until then, plan where that process happens and what it adds to lead time.

Space for your timing. Available buildings, power and room to expand differ by Campus and change over time, so ask early what fits your schedule.

Export controls. Review U.S. export-control requirements early, before shipping equipment, sharing technical drawings or software, or arranging technical training for the Mexico operation. Depending on the items, information, people and activities involved, the Export Administration Regulations (EAR) or International Traffic in Arms Regulations (ITAR) may apply. The review can matter before any equipment moves: for example, before giving the Mexico team access to controlled drawings. Have your export-compliance team determine which authorizations and access restrictions apply, with specialist advice where needed, and include them in the launch plan.

What Tetakawi does, and what to bring to a first conversation

On a Manufacturing Campus your team runs production: the parts, the process, the quality system, your customers and the decisions on your floor. Tetakawi’s teams handle the work around the plant, as agreed in the services you contract:

• Launch: one project lead plans the building, permits, first hires and first shipments against your date (start-up services).
• Building: a building on the Campus, prepared with you for your process and maintained by Tetakawi. Room to grow is assessed against your needs and the space available (industrial space).
• People: recruiting to your job descriptions, with your team choosing the candidates; employment, payroll and benefits run through Tetakawi’s Mexican operations (HR and payroll).
• Customs and trade: the import program and your customs record, built from the part data you supply (import and export). In Mexico, the importer and exporter of record is on Tetakawi’s side of the arrangement; entering the United States, your company is.
• Compliance: the tax, labor, environmental and permit filings and compliance responsibilities on Tetakawi’s side of the arrangement.

Plant managers are people who should be focused on plant production.

Eduardo Saavedra, EVP of Business Development, Tetakawi

You do not need to finish your diligence before talking to us. Bring the work, expected volumes, the processes and equipment, your facility needs and target timing; your current certification scope and the customer requirements associated with that work help if you have them. An early conversation helps assess whether a Campus fits and identifies what needs further evaluation. When you are ready, talk to Tetakawi about aerospace manufacturing in Mexico.

Frequently Asked Questions

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IMMEX allows authorized temporary imports for export manufacturing and services. The holder has to meet the program’s export obligations and account for each good through the customs procedures that apply to it.

For a manufacturer planning a Mexico plant, the practical questions are who handles each obligation, what information the plant must supply, and which changes need attention before goods move.

What it takes to keep an IMMEX program authorized

An IMMEX program is an authorization from Mexico’s Secretaría de Economía (SE) to a Mexican company, which becomes the program holder. The holder can be your own Mexican company. Under an authorized IMMEX shelter, the Mexican shelter company holds and operates the program while the foreign manufacturer directs its own production. The program holder carries the authorization and its customs-control obligations, and the IMMEX decree sets them out.

Two obligations are annual. The program has to show yearly exports of more than USD 500,000, or export invoicing of at least 10% of total invoicing, and the holder files a report each May on the previous year’s sales and exports. Newly authorized programs have the reporting and export-minimum exceptions set out below.

The rest runs all year:

• Tax standing. SAT, Mexico’s tax authority, has to show the holder with a valid e.firma (advanced electronic signature), an active tax registration, fiscal and operating addresses registered and active, a current positive compliance opinion, and no listing on the specific SAT taxpayer lists the decree names.
• Addresses. Temporarily imported goods are kept at the addresses registered in the program, and any movement follows the applicable customs procedures. Since January 2026, temporary imports that are not taken to, or not found at, the registered or declared addresses can also be seized as a precaution.
• Inventory. The holder maintains an automated inventory-control system that meets the applicable Annex 24 requirements.
• Paperwork. Records proving the goods’ legal stay and the applicable returns, exports or transfers, including physical-exit or delivery evidence where required.
• The goods themselves. The program covers specified goods. Since 1 January 2026, temporarily importing goods the program does not cover carries a fine of 250% to 300% of their commercial value under the Customs Law, and specified finished apparel and footwear tariff lines can no longer be imported temporarily under IMMEX at all.

Filing the annual report does not replace the ongoing tax-standing requirements. SE’s rules require a tax-standing check each March and publication of the program numbers that fail it.

Consider a plant that moves a packing operation into a second building across the street. For the program, the new building is an operating address. After the corresponding SAT filing, the change has to be requested with SE at least three business days before temporarily imported goods move there. Adding a building does not necessarily change the company’s fiscal address, but the trade team needs to check the new location’s SAT and IMMEX registrations before the first pallet crosses. That is why operating decisions like this one belong in front of the trade team early.

The IMMEX annual report and first-year exceptions

The annual report, formally the Reporte Anual de Operaciones de Comercio Exterior (RAOCE), covers the previous year’s total sales and exports. It is due on the last business day of May; in 2026 that was 29 May, and the next cycle closes in May 2027.

Missing the report, or failing the tax-standing requirements, can suspend new temporary imports. SE publishes the suspended program numbers in Mexico’s official gazette in June. The last business day of August is the deadline to avoid cancellation under this process. It is not permission to keep importing while suspended. A program still missing the report then is cancelled from 1 September, and SE publishes those program numbers in September. SE’s June 2026 notice said it would lift a listed suspension within two business days after the company filed the report.

SE’s notice of 30 June 2026 listed 441 IMMEX programs suspended for missing the annual report for 2025. Its notice of 29 September 2026 listed 189 programs cancelled with effect from 1 September. These notices cover the annual-report process. They do not measure cancellations for other types of breach, and they say nothing about why a company missed the date.

A newly authorized program has specific reporting exceptions, and the rules are precise about which year is which. Say you receive authorization in March 2026:

The exceptions cover reporting and the export test. They do not change the tax-standing requirements, which apply from the day the program is authorized.

IMMEX suspension and cancellation: what each one stops

Two different processes can lead to a cancellation, and they behave differently while they run.

The annual process is the one above, and the way to stay out of it is to file well before the May deadline and keep the tax requirements current.

Then there are cancellation proceedings for other breaches. They can concern inventory, registered locations, customs records, exports or transfers, and the specific ground and its conditions matter. For example, goods that cannot be shown at the registered addresses can be grounds for a proceeding. Under article 27 of the decree, SE notifies the holder that a proceeding has started and orders the suspension of temporary imports and of transfers to other IMMEX companies at the same time. The holder then has 10 business days, counted from when that notice legally takes effect, to present evidence and arguments, and SE has three months from the same point to resolve. The decree also allows limited exceptions for qualifying companies under exact conditions, which is a question for counsel.

So imports can stop as soon as the notified order takes effect. When a notice arrives, identify which authorization it affects and what it restricts before scheduling another movement of goods.

What happens to goods and machinery after an IMMEX cancellation

Cancellation also starts a clock for the goods. Once it is notified, the company has 60 calendar days to return the temporarily imported goods abroad or change them to definitive importation. That covers everything still within its permitted stay, machinery and equipment included, and the Customs Law has carried the same rule since the reform that took effect in January 2026.

A qualifying holder may request a one-time extension of up to 180 additional calendar days under SAT’s rule 4.3.8. The rule excludes cancellations under article 25, including those arising from the annual-report and tax-standing requirements. For the 60-day calculation, confirm when cancellation was legally notified to the holder. Do not assume its effective date, publication date and notification date are the same.

Say you have molds, a stamping press and several months of resin on site when a cancellation is notified, all within their permitted stay. All three fall under the same 60 days, whether they are inputs within their 18 months or machinery that could otherwise have stayed for the life of the program. Goods whose temporary-import period had already expired are different. They need separate regularization under SAT’s rule 2.5.2, subject to its requirements, and cancellation does not give them a new 60-day period.

So stopping new imports, handling the goods already in Mexico and resolving an overstay are three different processes, each with its own documents. An inventory record that separates goods within their stay from overstayed goods helps identify the deadline that applies to each.

How IVA/IEPS certification, OEA and importer registries are affected

An operation may also rely on IVA/IEPS certification, OEA registration and importer registries. IVA/IEPS certification gives a credit for the IVA (Mexico’s value-added tax) and IEPS (its special tax on production and services) on temporary imports. OEA is Mexico’s authorized economic operator program. Certain goods also require registration in specific import sectors. Each has its own rules, so a problem with IMMEX does not reach them all in the same way.

The IVA/IEPS certification’s separate 60-day period for goods runs from its expiry or from notification of its final cancellation. It does not extend an IMMEX deadline, and the VAT and IVA/IEPS guide covers the certification side in detail.

How to check an IMMEX program’s status

Whether the program is your own or a shelter provider’s, start with three checks.

SE publishes a monthly directory of IMMEX programs, with the program number and year, the holder’s legal name, the status and the plant addresses. Match on the program number and year together with the legal name, because names repeat. The directory shows status as of its cutoff date and may not reflect later changes. It does not establish the status of IVA/IEPS certification, OEA registration or importer registries.

Next come the official gazette notices published after that cutoff. The June and September lists show whether a program number was suspended or cancelled under the annual process, and SE’s rules require a list of the programs that fail the March tax-standing check.

Then there is the holder itself. It is reasonable to ask for current confirmation: the latest annual-report acknowledgement, a current positive compliance opinion, the registered addresses that cover your plant, the status and term of the IVA/IEPS certification and any OEA registration, and the registries your goods need. For instance, a manufacturer adding a product line with regulated components would ask about the sector registry before the first order is placed.

None of this replaces counsel’s review of your own structure, but it turns “is the program in order?” into a question with documents behind it.

How this works on a Tetakawi Manufacturing Campus

Tetakawi has helped companies manufacture in Mexico since 1986. A Campus adds established industrial space, shared infrastructure and an on-site support organization. Tetakawi is not a contract manufacturer. IMMEX programs and IVA/IEPS certification are active across the network, and OEA registration is in place at most Campuses.

Under the Tetakawi arrangement, responsibilities are divided as follows. On Tetakawi’s side:

• The IMMEX program, kept in compliance
• The IVA/IEPS certification, renewed each year
• The Annex 24 inventory control and the annual report
• The importer and exporter of record in Mexico
• Customs entries, prepared and audited by the Campus import and export team from the data you supply, and filed by the Mexican customs broker Tetakawi appoints

On your side:

• Accurate product, material-consumption and inventory information
• Planned sales and shipments, coordinated with the trade team so each one follows the right customs procedure
• The importer of record entering the United States, with your own customs broker

You control production, process and quality.

That split follows the logic of the rules. The dated filings and the program-level controls sit with the holder’s team, while the information they depend on comes from your plant. When a product, a material, a volume or an address changes, telling the trade team early lets the record and the registrations move before the goods do. The IMMEX program page sets out how the shelter path works and what holding your own program takes.

Updated October 2026, on the IMMEX decree, SE’s rules, SAT’s foreign-trade rules (RGCE) and the Customs Law in force that month.

Common questions about IMMEX compliance

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So for a manufacturer, the practical questions are how approvals could change and what closer compliance review would mean for an operation. Its measures are at different stages, so no single launch date makes all of them available.

Who is developing IMMEX 4.0, and who does it affect?

Mexico’s Economy Ministry is developing the initiative as part of the government’s Plan México agenda. Other federal authorities have roles in particular measures, including the tax authority, SAT, the customs agency, ANAM, and the agency that runs government digital systems. Industry groups have also put forward proposals of their own.

It concerns the federal IMMEX framework across Mexico, so it is relevant both to companies applying for a program and to those already operating under one. Which changes matter to a particular manufacturer depends on its activities, its authorizations and how it operates.

Why Mexico is changing IMMEX

The stated aim is to strengthen the competitiveness of export manufacturing and support investment in Mexico. The approach pairs simpler administration with clearer compliance assessment: less duplication of documents, clearer criteria and better identification of companies that need closer review.

That framing comes from a presentation attributed to Mexico’s Economy Ministry, dated September 30, 2026 and made available by INCOMEX, which outlines the initiative’s main measures.

What would change under IMMEX 4.0

Application processing. The presentation reports a 140-day average for new IMMEX applications and announces a 15-day processing figure. It does not specify business or calendar days, or show results demonstrating that the shorter figure has been achieved. It is an announced average, so it does not commit to a date for any particular application or production start.

Government information. The plan includes an IMMEX information portal and a shared company file so that authorities can work from connected records. The shared-file framework already has a published legal basis, while the presentation describes its implementation as work in process.

Review of program holders. The “IMMEX Seguro” workstream focuses on existing requirements, including applicable statistical reporting, export requirements and whether a company’s registered activity matches what it actually does. The presentation describes a case-by-case assessment, and being reviewed is not the same as being cancelled.

Proposed company levels. A risk model would assess compliance, operating performance and risk indicators, and place companies in three levels:

But while the presentation names the factors the model would weigh, it does not give the detailed calculation or weighting. So the bands alone do not tell a company which level it would reach or which benefits it would qualify for. A public list of company levels is proposed; publication of numerical scores or real-time updates is not specified.

Where IMMEX 4.0 stands in 2026, and when it applies

The initiative appeared in the government’s Plan México agenda in 2025. A decree published on May 4, 2026 established the legal framework for the foreign-trade single window and the shared electronic file.

Still, other measures have separate paths. The presentation lists some work as in process and some as pending, with time estimates that do not say when the clock starts. Those estimates do not add up to a firm rollout calendar for the whole initiative, and some changes may come through administrative steps while others need new rules.

So for an operating or investment decision, the useful question is narrower: does a particular requirement, procedure or benefit apply to this company and this transaction yet? A policy plan on its own does not settle that.

What manufacturers should do now

If you are planning an operation, work from current authorization requirements and a realistic schedule for the steps to start manufacturing in Mexico. Faster processing could help when approval is holding up the project, but premises, equipment, staffing and other approvals also affect readiness. Some of that work can run in parallel.

If you already operate under IMMEX, maintain the records and reporting your program requires. Confirm applicable deadlines and exceptions, especially for a newly authorized program. The modernization initiative does not remove existing duties.

Continue to distinguish IMMEX from separate authorizations such as IVA/IEPS certification and OEA. The proposed company levels do not merge those systems.

The post IMMEX 4.0: Goals, Timeline and What Changes appeared first on Tetakawi.

The reason is people. In the three places a Mexico decision usually starts, the United States, Canada and Germany, the workers who run manufacturing equipment are retiring faster than they are being replaced. Mexico is the one large manufacturing economy next door where the workforce is still growing. This page walks through that, market by market, then the tariff picture, then what it costs. Figures are dated where they are used. Current as of September 2026.

Mexico’s biggest advantage is people

Mexico’s economically active population reached 61.7 million in the second quarter of 2026, up 612,000 from a year earlier, with 60.0 million employed (INEGI). No other economy in North America is adding workers at that pace.

The technical pipeline is deep. About 170,000 students completed engineering, manufacturing and construction programs in Mexico in the 2024 to 2025 cycle (ANUIES), and engineering makes up an unusually large share of Mexican higher education. Technical universities and trade schools sit in every major manufacturing city, and the manufacturers who have been here for decades built the training around them.

That combination, a growing workforce and a technical bench, is what the next three sections are missing.

The United States: more openings than people to fill them

US manufacturers had 580,000 job openings at the end of July 2026, up from roughly 428,000 a year earlier (Bureau of Labor Statistics). The gap is not turnover. Manufacturing quits ran at 1.4 percent in July against 1.9 percent for the economy as a whole.

The gap is age. One in four US manufacturing workers is 55 or older, and only one in thirteen is under 25. Deloitte and the Manufacturing Institute projected in April 2024 that US manufacturing could need 3.8 million people through 2033, with 2.8 million of that simply replacing retirements. A tariff can change where a product is made. It cannot make a maintenance technician appear.

For a US manufacturer, Mexico is the way to add the shift you cannot staff at home, a few hours from your existing plants and inside the same trade agreement.

Canada: fewer people arriving

Canada’s population declined for a third straight quarter in early 2026, and the change is policy, not a blip. The 2026 to 2028 immigration plan cuts new temporary worker admissions 37 percent and student admissions 49 percent (Statistics Canada; Government of Canada). Those were two of the labor channels Canadian manufacturers leaned on most.

Canadian manufacturers already know Mexico. Canada’s direct investment position in Mexico rose from C$48.1 billion at the end of 2023 to C$66.0 billion in 2025, and Canada was the third-largest source of foreign direct investment in Mexico in the first half of 2026 (Statistics Canada; Secretaría de Economía). USMCA covers all three countries, so a Canadian company producing in Mexico serves the US market under the same rules it uses at home.

Germany: skilled trades with no candidates

In Germany, six in ten open positions for skilled machining and metal-cutting workers had no suitably qualified candidate anywhere in the country in March 2026 (KOFA). Destatis calculates that 13.3 million people now in the German labor force, 30 percent of it, reach retirement age by 2040. Industrial electricity in Europe cost roughly twice US levels in 2025 (International Energy Agency), and total employer labor cost in German manufacturing was about 49.50 euros an hour.

European capital has already found the answer. Spain was the second-largest source of foreign direct investment in Mexico in 2025 and the Netherlands the fourth. For a German manufacturer, Mexico offers a growing technical workforce, energy at North American prices, and a plant inside the US market’s trade agreement.

Tariffs are not the wall they look like

USMCA is intact. At the July 1, 2026 review the United States chose not to extend the agreement’s term, but nothing inside it changed: qualifying goods from Mexico still enter the United States duty free, the agreement runs to 2036, and it is now reviewed every year.

The new Section 301 tariff of 10 percent applies only to goods that do not qualify under USMCA, and Section 232 goods are covered by their own rules. Manufacturers responded by qualifying, not by leaving: before 2025 only about half of US imports from Mexico entered under USMCA preference, and by mid-2025 that share had climbed to about 80 percent (Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas, August 2026). Two-way goods trade between the United States and Mexico reached $871.6 billion in 2025 (USTR).

Qualification is a product test, not a country test. Design the bill of materials for the rule of origin before the plant is designed, and the tariff question is answered.

The capital is already voting

Mexico recorded $34.968 billion of foreign direct investment in the first half of 2026, its highest first half on record (Secretaría de Economía). Most of it, 88.5 percent, was earnings that companies already operating in Mexico chose to reinvest there. That is the clearest signal in the data: the manufacturers who know the market best are putting more into it.

What it costs

A production operator on a Tetakawi Manufacturing Campus starts at about $5.19 an hour fully fringed, and a machinist at about $8.95: the average starting rates across the five Campuses in October 2026, at 18.5 pesos to the dollar, based on a 46-hour week. The same roles cost about $32 and $42 an hour fully loaded in U.S. manufacturing on the BLS median. Fully fringed is the wage plus the benefits and contributions. The role-by-role figures are on the manufacturing labor costs in Mexico page.

Mexico’s workweek moves from 48 hours to 40 in two-hour steps each January from 2027 to 2030, with pay unchanged. Forty hours is the week US and Canadian plants already run, so the comparison gets more like for like, and the cost gap stays.

Where a Tetakawi Campus fits

A Tetakawi Manufacturing Campus is a turnkey operating environment: you run your own factory, and Tetakawi runs everything around it. You keep full control of production, quality and your IP. Tetakawi is not a contract manufacturer.

Tetakawi provides the building, the workforce, the import and export operation, and the Mexican entity with its permits and registrations. In Mexico, Tetakawi is the importer and exporter of record; entering the United States, your company is. We have run Campuses in Mexico since 1986, and more than 60 manufacturers with 22,000+ employees operate on them today.

Bring us the roles you need to fill, the shift pattern you plan to run and your expected volumes. We will show you what those roles cost in a specific labor market, how long they take to recruit, and which Campus fits. A typical launch runs about three to six months; qualifying projects can get started in as little as 30 days.

Common questions about manufacturing in Mexico in 2026

The post Why Manufacturers Are Choosing Mexico in 2026 appeared first on Tetakawi.

Had all three governments confirmed, the term would have been extended by a new 16-year period running from the review, moving the expiry from 2036 to 2042.

The review itself did not change the agreement. What changed around it was the cost of falling outside it, and the value of being able to prove that your product qualifies.

Tariff treatment described here is current as of September 11, 2026. Product-specific treatment depends on HTS classification and applicable exclusions.

What the July 1 decision changed, and what it did not

Nothing inside the agreement changed that day. Not a duty rate, not a rule of origin, not a dispute procedure.

The mechanism is simple enough. Article 34.7 ends the agreement 16 years after it took effect, which was July 1, 2020, unless all three governments confirm in writing that they want another 16-year term. On July 1 the United States did not confirm. Mexico and Canada did.

That decision did not shorten anything. The agreement runs to July 1, 2036 either way. Ending it sooner requires six months of written notice under Article 34.6, and no government has given that notice.

What the decision produced is an annual review cycle. And Article 34.7 is explicit that the parties do not have to wait for one of those meetings: at any time between the conclusion of a review and the agreement’s expiry, all three governments can extend the term by another 16 years simply by confirming in writing.

That is where the legal clock sits. It is a different thing from where the politics sit. If the negotiation itself is the open question rather than the operating consequences, the review process is covered in the USMCA 2026 review.

Why preference claims jumped from half to 80 percent

The best evidence for how manufacturers respond when USMCA qualification becomes more valuable arrived before the 2026 review.

Before 2025, USMCA preference was claimed on roughly half of US imports from Mexico. By July 2025 that share was about 80 percent, according to the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas in August 2026. In July 2026, 80.2 percent of imports from Canada and Mexico combined claimed a USMCA exemption, per the Penn Wharton Budget Model.

The reason matters. When the tariff outside USMCA was relatively small, many companies concluded that certification, documentation and regional-sourcing costs were not worth the savings. When the gap widened, that calculation changed.

The jump does not tell us exactly how companies adjusted. Some may have changed sourcing. Others may simply have documented and claimed preference that previously was not worth the administrative effort. What it does show is that behavior changed quickly once qualifying was worth more.

Made in Mexico is not the same as USMCA qualified

Made in Mexico does not automatically mean USMCA qualified. It is the most expensive misunderstanding in this category, and it costs money quietly.

Country of origin and USMCA originating status are separate customs determinations. A product can be treated as a product of Mexico without satisfying the USMCA rule required to receive preferential tariff treatment.

This is the distinction that decides your duty bill, and it is the one most often missed. For most manufactured goods, the analysis starts with these principal pathways:

There is no single North American content percentage that applies across the board. The rule follows the product’s tariff classification, which is why two goods coming off the same line can reach different answers.

So a plant in Monterrey can produce a good that is properly treated as a product of Mexico but does not qualify for USMCA preference. In that case the US importer may owe the ordinary tariff schedule duty and the additional 10 percent Section 301 tariff that took effect July 24, 2026, unless a product-specific or sectoral exemption applies.

Here is the part worth underlining. At entry, the Section 301 action exempts products of Mexico entered free of duty under USMCA. That means qualifying is not enough; the preferential treatment has to be claimed and supported. USMCA does provide a post-importation process for qualifying goods when preference was not claimed at entry, generally within one year, subject to CBP requirements.

That is what changed the economics of USMCA qualification over the past eighteen months. Whether your operation runs under an IMMEX program or your own structure, the qualification question is the same one.

What qualification does not do

Qualifying under USMCA does not make every tariff disappear. Some products carry duties that sit outside the agreement entirely, and those are charged on the product rather than on where it was made.

Since April 6, 2026, the Section 232 duties on covered steel, aluminum and copper articles and derivatives apply to the full customs value of the imported product, regardless of metal content. Metal content still matters, because it determines whether an article is covered at all and which rate applies. It is no longer the base the duty is calculated on.

The rules are granular in ways that reward reading them. One June 2026 provision gives a defined set of mobile industrial equipment and machinery from Canada and Mexico that qualify for USMCA preference a duty assessed on non-US content rather than full value, subject to a minimum effective duty of 15 percent. It does not apply to steel and aluminum products generally. That is the lesson in miniature: the answer follows the tariff code, not the country.

Do not assume one tariff rule answers the whole question. Some products fall under separate Section 232 rules, and those rules can change how Section 301 applies. The Section 301 action does not reach goods classified under a specified list of Section 232 provisions covering metals, autos and auto parts, medium and heavy duty vehicles and parts, wood products, semiconductors and patented pharmaceuticals, so the two do not stack in those cases. The answer follows the product classification, not the country on the carton.

For passenger vehicles and light trucks that qualify for USMCA preference, the importer may submit US-content documentation for a model line to the Secretary of Commerce. Where Commerce approves that model line, the 25 percent Section 232 tariff applies to the vehicle’s non-US content rather than its full value. If US content is overstated on an approved model line, the tariff can apply retroactively and prospectively to the full value of every vehicle in that model line imported by that importer.

Three ways a USMCA claim fails an audit

What this means for your operation

If you already produce in Mexico, your immediate duty exposure did not change because the agreement was not extended on July 1. What matters today is whether your products qualify under the rules now in force, whether you are actually claiming preference, and whether you can substantiate that qualification on demand.

If you are still deciding, design your sourcing and bill of materials with the applicable product-specific rule in mind, rather than assuming production in Mexico is enough. The site decision and the origin decision are separate questions, and the second is the one that shows up in landed cost.

That analysis belongs before the plant is designed around a sourcing plan, not after. You should know how your major inputs will enter Mexico, what happens to them there, what records the operation will have to maintain, and which finished goods require a closer USMCA or tariff analysis before you commit.

Where Tetakawi fits in the due diligence

If you are evaluating a Mexico operation, Tetakawi can help build that operating picture before you commit.

As part of our Mexico due diligence, Tetakawi performs customs and trade analysis around the proposed operation. Bring your intended bill of materials, source countries, product classifications and shipping flows, and we can work through the applicable USMCA rule of origin, the likely qualification path, Section 301 and Section 232 exposure, and the Mexican import, export and inventory control structure the operation would need to support.

There is still a boundary. The US importer of record retains its responsibilities to CBP, and where a company needs a formal legal position or certainty from Customs, its broker, trade counsel or a CBP binding ruling may be appropriate.

What we can do is make sure they are working from a clean operating picture of what enters Mexico, what happens to it, and what leaves.

That boundary matters because of where the liability sits. Your broker can file the entry, but the importer still owns the liability. Under US customs rules, payment to a broker does not relieve the importer if the duties are not paid correctly, and a commercial agreement between parties can allocate costs without changing what customs authorities require of the importer of record.

The paperwork works the same way. A certification of origin may be completed by the importer, the exporter or the producer, and the records behind it may sit with any of them or with suppliers. Who signs the certification does not eliminate the importer’s own responsibility for the entry and applicable duties. Exporters and producers also have their own certification and recordkeeping obligations.

For companies that go forward, we provide access to the Mexican operating entity and trade program, along with import and export administration, at our Manufacturing Campuses. That is where the Mexican side of the evidentiary chain gets built: the trade program, the required inventory controls, the import and export records, and the compliance discipline behind them. Those records do not replace your US origin analysis. They are what proves what actually moved into, through and out of the Mexican operation.

The question worth bringing is not whether Mexico still makes sense. It is which of your products qualify today, whether you are claiming it, and whether you can prove it.

The post USMCA Wasn’t Extended. It Didn’t Expire. Here’s What Changed. appeared first on Tetakawi.

If you manufacture in Mexico, or you are sizing an operation there, that schedule moves your labor numbers in every year of the plan. This page covers what changes, what does not, and what is worth settling while there is still time to design around it.

Start with the part that is easiest to get wrong. The reform does not cut anyone’s pay. The law forbids any reduction in salaries, wages or benefits as a consequence of it, so the cost does not arrive as a wage increase. It arrives as fewer maximum ordinary hours for the same protected compensation. How much that affects output depends on what you do next: productivity, line balance, staffing, shift design and automation all become part of the equation.

The reform also does not arrive all at once. Manufacturers have a defined transition from 48 hours today to 40 in 2030, one two-hour step each January, and the decree itself sets aside the rest of 2026 as an adjustment period. That makes this a capacity-planning decision rather than a surprise cost, with four annual steps to adapt before the full 40-hour ceiling arrives in 2030. The valuable part is predictability: you know the statutory ceiling for each step before you hire the first employee, design the shift pattern or size the line.

Current as of September 11, 2026. Article references are to the Ley Federal del Trabajo as amended.

This is law, and it sits in the Constitution

Nothing here is waiting on a vote.

On March 3, 2026, Mexico amended Article 123 of its Constitution to establish the 40-hour week. On May 1, 2026, a decree published in the Diario Oficial de la Federación carried the change into the Federal Labor Law, effective the day it appeared. The 40-hour weekly ceiling, its phase-in and the overtime framework now have constitutional rank. The implementing details sit in the Federal Labor Law. Planning around a reversal is not a plan.

The reduction is gradual. The ordinary week stays at 48 hours through December 31, 2026. The first step lands on January 1, 2027, and a step lands every January 1 after that until the week reaches 40 in 2030.

Compensation stays protected as hours phase down

The reform does not give you permission to pay less.

The decree states that in no case may the reduction of the workweek mean a decrease in wages, salaries or benefits, and the same protection appears in the constitutional text. The shorter week is not a cost saving, and treating it as one is the first mistake to avoid.

Many manufacturing workforces in Mexico are built around a daily wage, the cuota diaria, though the law permits other structures, including payment for each hour of service. The structure matters less than the arithmetic. If your operation currently uses the full statutory week, the maximum ordinary hours available fall while protected compensation stays where it is.

Mexican workers are also paid for days they do not work, including the weekly rest day, statutory holidays and vacation, so hours paid and hours worked have never been the same number. The reform widens the gap between them, and that gap is the cost effect. When we express Mexico labor cost on a per-hour basis, that figure is a derived comparison built from the cost of employing the worker. It is not necessarily the worker’s contractual wage rate.

What changes in the labor model

Fewer maximum ordinary hours, with compensation protected from reduction because of the reform. That is the baseline arithmetic, and it repeats at every step.

These are statutory ceilings on scheduled working time, not a pay basis. The annual figures are the weekly cap times 52, for a worker scheduled at the ceiling, before holidays, vacation and absenteeism.

The last column is capacity, not cost, and it applies to a worker currently scheduled at the 48-hour maximum. For a 500-person workforce using the full ceiling today, the 2030 step is roughly 208,000 fewer ordinary scheduled hours a year, to be recovered through productivity, additional headcount, another shift, or premium-rate overtime. Operations already running a shorter week are affected proportionally less. The ceiling itself changes nationwide, though, and no location, structure or partner changes that. Productivity is one of the most valuable levers, and it is not the only one. Staffing, shift design, process improvement and automation all become part of the capacity plan.

How the week can be distributed

The reform changes more than the weekly number. It also adds express flexibility around how the workweek can be distributed.

Article 58 allows employers and workers to agree on the distribution of the weekly schedule. At the same time, Article 61 retains the existing daily figures of eight hours for a day shift, seven for a night shift and seven and a half for a mixed shift. Article 68 adds another boundary: ordinary and overtime hours together may never exceed 12 hours in a day.

Those provisions have to be read together.

That matters because compressed schedules are one of the first questions manufacturers are asking. The reform clearly creates room for agreed distribution of the workweek, and the legislative history specifically contemplated schedules that could result in two or more rest days. But the daily figures in Article 61 were not removed, and current STPS guidance continues to reference an eight-hour daily maximum.

For that reason, manufacturers should not assume either that a compressed schedule is automatically available or that every hour above eight automatically has to be treated as overtime. How the new distribution language interacts with the retained daily limits is an implementation question that should be evaluated for the specific shift structure being considered.

What is settled is the outer boundary on overtime. Article 66 permits up to four hours of overtime in a day, on no more than four days in a week, subject to the weekly phase-in. Article 68 caps ordinary and overtime work together at 12 hours in a day.

The practical opportunity in 2026 is to model more than one schedule before the first reduction takes effect. A six-day structure, a five-day structure and any proposed compressed arrangement can produce very different consequences for recruiting, transportation, overtime exposure and production coverage.

Whatever structure you choose, document it before implementation. Article 58 requires the distribution to be agreed between employer and worker. The agreed working-time arrangement should therefore be reflected in the applicable employment instruments before the new schedule begins.

Overtime capacity does not expand in 2027

If the plan is to cover the first step with overtime, check what the allowance actually does in 2027.

The reform rewrote how overtime can be shaped. The old limit of three hours a day on three days a week became four hours a day on four days a week. The premium rates did not move: the first tier is paid at double the ordinary rate, and hours above the weekly threshold are paid at triple. What changed on its own timetable is how many hours you actually get.

Read the third column first. The first two-hour reduction arrives in 2027, but the double-time allowance stays at nine hours a week. The reform gives you no new overtime capacity to offset that first step. An operation with unused overtime room today can use some of it, at a premium rate and inside the daily limits, but the allowance itself does not grow until 2028. The wider four-day distribution is already available, so the flexibility lets you reshape the same nine hours rather than add to them.

Then read the last column. At the statutory maximum, ordinary plus permitted overtime falls from 61 hours in 2026 to 56 in 2030. How much that matters to you depends on how much overtime you use today, and overtime remains premium-rate capacity. The triple-time hours in particular are a legal maximum rather than a planning assumption.

Electronic timekeeping is now in the law

Mexico has added an obligation to prove the hours, not simply respect them.

Article 132 now requires electronic recording of each worker’s start and finish, along with the duty to produce that record to the authority on request. A new penalty provision sets 250 to 5,000 UMA, which at the 2026 UMA of 117.31 pesos a day is roughly 29,300 to 586,600 pesos, and where a single omission affects several workers a sanction may be imposed for each worker affected.

Here is the part worth underlining. When the agreement with the worker can be established, the statute gives the electronic record full evidentiary effect. Without it, the record does not receive that same statutory treatment.

The technical rules are still being written. STPS must issue provisions defining the scope of the requirement and its exceptions, with those provisions taking effect January 1, 2027. Employers should decide now how the electronic record will be implemented, and how worker agreement with its contents will be documented if they intend to rely on the statute’s full evidentiary treatment.

What the reform does not change

Planning a new operation on the new numbers

If you are modeling a Mexico operation now, the reform changes an input rather than the conclusion. What it changes is how much ordinary labor time each employee can be scheduled for, and that flows through headcount, shift count, line balance and the capital you need.

Replacing that ordinary capacity has a short list of answers, and scheduling is only one of them. Productivity and process improvement. Automation. Line balancing, changeover and downtime reduction. Additional headcount. An additional shift. Premium-rate overtime, which is the most expensive and the most constrained. Each carries a different cost and a different lead time, and the four-year phase-in is the window to choose deliberately rather than absorb the change as lost output.

The practical test is your own assumptions. Any Mexico labor model that assumes a permanent 48-hour statutory ceiling is now outdated. Your labor model, shift structure and headcount assumptions should be built around where the ceiling is going, step by step, rather than where it sits today.

For operations at our Manufacturing Campuses, Tetakawi manages the formal employment relationship, which puts the employment agreements, the payroll configuration, the timekeeping system itself and the labor compliance work on our side of the line. Day-to-day schedule administration and the shift model itself stay with plant supervision, because surge capacity, transportation and turnover exposure are production judgments. We have been working through the reform with those operations since the decree published.

The advantage of the phase-in is that you can model the change before you build around it.

The post Mexico’s 40-Hour Workweek: A Manufacturer’s Guide to the 2027-2030 Transition appeared first on Tetakawi.

This page covers the municipality itself: what is here, who manufactures in it, and which projects it suits. The corridor’s workforce history and the operating model behind a plant here are covered elsewhere, and the technically intensive side of this labor market is covered on the Guaymas page.

A small municipality inside a larger labor market

Empalme on its own is not the labor market. The corridor is.

The municipality recorded 51,431 people in Mexico’s 2020 census, and it is smaller now than it was in 2010. That is worth stating plainly rather than working around, because it changes how you should read the number.

Together with Guaymas it forms a metropolitan zone of roughly 208,000 people, and the two municipalities sit about fifteen minutes apart and share one commuting pool. Recruiting here draws on the corridor, and company transportation is what makes that practical rather than theoretical.

The town’s name means junction, and it was built as one: a Southern Pacific rail junction founded in 1905, with repair shops that were the economic engine for most of the twentieth century. What happened when that ended, and what replaced it, is the subject of how the Guaymas and Empalme workforce was built. The short version is that manufacturing has been the town’s industrial base for four decades.

What is actually here: the Bella Vista Campus

The practical answer to “what is in Empalme” is Bella Vista, Tetakawi’s industrial park in Empalme, which opened in 1986.

Its published profile is 121 acres and about 1.6 million square feet under management, with 20 MVA of power, a four-inch gas line at 300 PSI, and on-site desalination of roughly 211,000 gallons a day alongside water reclamation.

What is manufactured here

Empalme’s manufacturing profile is different from its neighbor’s, and the distinction is the useful part.

Where Guaymas developed around precision machining and engine components, Bella Vista was built for assembly-led, higher-headcount manufacturing: wire harnesses, electronics, medical devices and automotive components, the kind of work that runs on assembly headcount and consistency rather than on a small number of highly specialized machinists.

TE Connectivity has manufactured in Empalme since 1989. Huber+Suhner operates here as well. Those are long tenures in a market this size, and they are the reason the local assembly workforce has the depth it does.

Manufacturing sits within a broader local economy that also includes agriculture and food-related activity.

The workforce, and what it costs

The question this market answers well is volume hiring for assembly and light manufacturing, supported by a technical education base that includes a CONALEP technical college in the municipality itself and the wider corridor’s institutions. The question it answers less well is a large ramp needing specialized machinists, which is a Guaymas conversation.

Wages here are the corridor’s wages: Empalme and Guaymas are priced as one labor market, so the figures do not differ between the two municipalities. The roles below are the ones an assembly or light-manufacturing operation hires in volume.

Starting rates at the Tetakawi Empalme Manufacturing Campus, fully fringed employer cost, USD per hour, October 2026, at 18.5 pesos to the dollar, based on a 46-hour week. Fully fringed is the wage plus the benefits and contributions.

Technically intensive roles, and how quickly cost rises with specialization, sit on the Guaymas page. Network-wide starting figures and the method behind all of them sit on the cost and workforce page. How recruiting and employment work under a Tetakawi operation is covered in shelter services in Guaymas and Empalme.

How Empalme connects

The same corridor logistics apply here, with one distance difference.

Empalme sits on four-lane Highway 15 about 260 miles from the Nogales, Arizona crossing, ten miles further south than Guaymas, and that northbound lane is the first route to model for United States customers. The deep-water Port of Guaymas is fifteen minutes away, which matters if your supply chain genuinely uses ocean freight and very little if it does not. Commercial air access runs through Hermosillo International Airport, about ninety minutes north. The customs and border mechanics, the port expansion announced in February 2026 and the reasons rail is conditional rather than central are all covered on the Guaymas page.

Who should shortlist Empalme

Empalme is often worth a closer look when:

Compare another market early when:

What Empalme is not

Common questions about manufacturing in Empalme

If Empalme is on your list

Three numbers and a date settle it: your square footage, your connected load, and your target production date, against the job titles and headcount curve your ramp requires.

Empalme answers well for assembly-led manufacturing that needs existing space, substantial site infrastructure and a workforce supported by an established transportation and employee-services infrastructure. It answers less well for machining-heavy programs, which belong fifteen minutes north.

Tetakawi has operated in this municipality since 1986 and runs five Manufacturing Campuses in Mexico. The site specifics sit on the Bella Vista page, the compliance and trade questions on their own, and the technical side of this labor market fifteen minutes north at Roca Fuerte.

More on Empalme: shelter services in Guaymas and Empalme, how the Guaymas and Empalme workforce was built and four tips for manufacturing in Empalme, Sonora.

The post Manufacturing in Empalme: Workforce, Space and Access appeared first on Tetakawi.