PLAYA DEL CARMEN, Q. ROO.- The demand for logistics and freight transportation services in Mexico is beginning to feel extraordinary pressure, given the increase in volume caused by the effect of nearshoring (relocation of production lines).
Different providers have detected this for some time and have begun to offer new services related to this trend , placing special emphasis on intermodal services.
Ferrovalle , the short line railway terminal inside Mexico City, has witnessed this effect with clear increases in the volume operated in its two divisions.
On the one hand, the railway division adds a 10% annual growth in the volume of railway cars operated in the first six months of this year, where there are 50 thousand additional cars of which they have detected that 12 thousand 500 of them are product of new industrial activity related to nearshoring .
Meanwhile, the intermodal division has had a 30% increase during the same period, with 25 thousand additional containers operated, six thousand of them also identified by nearshoring .
“These are increases in volume never seen before,” said Francisco Fabila, general manager of the company, during his participation in the 24th National Freight Transport Forum organized by the National Association of Private Transport (ANTP) .
He himself promotes the terminal as the “logistical lung” of the country’s capital, since it has a rail connection with the main sea ports, such as Manzanillo, Lázaro Cárdenas and Veracruz , as well as five border crossings between Mexico and the United States. all this either through the main railway lines that operate in the national territory and also with their peers in the northern neighbor.
The capacity of the terminal to receive goods or containers by rail allows its clients, mainly shipping lines, to carry out the last mile through motor transport providers , which reduces polluting gas emissions due to the effect of intermodalism.
Francisco Fabila also said that the company has opened new cross-border services in alliance with North American railway companies, as part of the relocation of companies that have installed their production lines in Mexico, but seek to move these goods to the United States or Canada.
Transmaritime route
Others that seek to take advantage of this increase in the need for transportation of goods as a result of industrial relocation have been SSA Marine México and Crowley , through Mexico Gulf Express , a maritime service that connects Mexico with the United States through the Gulf of Mexico waterway. Mexico.
This logistics alliance offers weekly departures from Tuxpan, Veracruz , where SSA has a marine terminal, and arrival in Gulfport, Mississippi, where Crowley also operates its own terminal.
The characteristics of the service include the offer of containers and reefers available, customs clearance, a transit time of three days with the Crowley fleet, service for cargo of all types and sizes, and motor transportation and intermodal services both in the Mexican as in the American.
“Every part of the supply chain has to prepare for that growth,” said Claudia Kattán-Jordán, vice president for Central America, Mexico and Panama at Crowley Logistics, also present at the ANTP forum.
For his part, Iker Allison, vice president of SSA Marine Mexico, indicated that they saw the opportunity “for a long time” to build this transportation alliance with Crowley, motivated in part by the shortage of motor transport drivers – which in Mexico number around of 56 thousand seats available -, “but more than that, we want to provide diversification for the transportation of all merchandise going to the United States.”
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