Maritime freight transport to Mexico has entered an adjustment phase that, rather than reflecting a crisis, exposes the tensions accumulated after years of accelerated growth, inflated expectations, and infrastructure that failed to keep pace with demand. What was interpreted during 2023 and 2024 as the definitive consolidation of the country as the new logistics epicenter of North America began to show signs of exhaustion in 2025. Torsten Nolting, senior vice president of Hapag-Lloyd in Mexico, describes it in an interview as an inevitable correction: “We had a declining import market in 2025, after two years of strong import growth, especially from Asia to Mexico . ”
The 6% year-on-year decline in maritime imports in the Mexican market during 2025, according to data from Container Trades Statistics (CTS) , far from erasing previous growth, revealed the structural fragility of a system that had been operating beyond its limits. The problem was not only the reduction in demand, but also the context in which it occurred (primarily on the Pacific coast): saturated terminals, rigid customs processes, and a logistics chain incapable of absorbing the volume peaks generated by the market itself . “The infrastructure couldn’t handle all that volume,” says Nolting, recalling that even with the market contraction, the port of Manzanillo faced months of operational disruptions stemming from customs processes that paralyzed the flow of goods—at least during the May-July period of last year.
This episode revealed a reality that growth had obscured: the Mexican port system was unprepared to sustain a prolonged cycle of rapid expansion. Congestion ceased to be an extraordinary event and became a structural factor, forcing shipping companies to divert vessels, reorganize itineraries, and incur additional costs that eroded the system’s efficiency . “We couldn’t keep a ship waiting for seven days, as they requested in Manzanillo; the costs are exorbitant,” explains Nolting, describing the economic impact of the operational paralysis.
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