Canadian Pacific Kansas City (CPKC) of Mexico announced that refrigerated service will begin next August with the Monterrey-Kansas City, San Luis Potosí-Kansas City, and a third route that was not revealed .
“We’re going to bring animal products and food from Kansas City to Mexico. The idea is to start with the MMX (Mexico West Express) train. Today we’re bringing 2,400 meters of rail, between 80 and 90 cars, and we’re going to load refrigerated cargo onto that train,” said Oscar Del Cueto, president of the railroad.
In an interview, he mentioned that they have already met with authorities from the National Service of Health, Safety and Agri-Food Quality (Senasica) , as well as with Julio Berdegué Sacristán, head of the Secretariat of Agriculture and Rural Development (Sader) , in order to address the issues related to carrying out the movement of refrigerated goods.
“The document has already been sent to the United States to place the Senasica inspectors in Kansas, and Senasica has everything ready to have them. All that’s left is for the U.S. government to sign it, and it’s going very well,” he stated.
He specified that they estimate that this service will begin next August , in addition to the construction of the import and export center in Port Saint John, New Brunswick, Canada, which will be ready in 2026, while in Kansas City the first cold storage facility will be inaugurated in that month.
Del Cueto recalled that they had already conducted tests for this type of service from Monterrey to the United States .
It’s worth noting that in 2023, CPKC and Americold Realty Trust established a strategic partnership to optimize temperature-controlled logistics across North America. As part of this agreement, Americold plans to invest between $500 million and $1 billion over the next five to 10 years in development projects with the railroad and its other strategic partner, DP World .
Meanwhile, CPKC added 1,000 new 53-foot combined transport refrigerated containers to its network, doubling its existing fleet and providing more shipping options to customers using the Mexico Oeste Express (MMX) combined transport service.
MMX is North America’s first single-line rail service serving refrigerated freight shippers from the Midwest to Mexico, a market currently served by trucks.
Regarding a possible impact from the imposition of tariffs on steel and aluminum, Del Cueto ruled out any impact; they are even waiting for the Mexican government to announce what actions will be taken in this regard.
“We had noticed that they were keeping the cost in Mexico, while exports continued. Remember, we have a trade imbalance with the United States; there are more imports, but I think there should be an adjustment in tariffs, and it’s too early to say whether there will be an impact on manufacturing (of railroad equipment). President Trump’s idea of creating these tariffs in the United States is to protect the industry. I think there will be resolutions soon; we’ll have to wait and see what the Mexican government says,” he emphasized.
He reiterated that the company had a good quarter despite the initial tariff actions ; however, they are currently seeking to move merchandise from Canada to Mexico and vice versa, and to use the United States as a bridge to avoid tariffs. In this regard, he stated that they are already experiencing volume growth in LP gas (liquefied petroleum gas), grains, and plastics.
Likewise, he explained that after a review and new designs for the route, the Mexico-Querétaro passenger train would only be using nine kilometers (km) of its tracks; however, how it would operate at that point, which is already close to Querétaro, has not yet been analyzed.
“New designs were made, there were different proposals where a different construction could be done so as not to affect the charging infrastructure, and the goal of the president (Claudia Sheinbaum) and the regulatory agency is to avoid using our infrastructure and build new ones, and that is being achieved,” he explained.
The Rail Transport Regulatory Agency (ARTF) stated a few weeks ago that passenger trains will run on dedicated tracks , although there are approximately five kilometers of track that are “extremely difficult” due to their topography, so a mixed operation would be carried out.
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