A flurry of European businesses have committed to future investments in Michoacán Governor Alfredo Ramírez Bedolla announced at a press conference following his trade tour to Germany, Austria and the Netherlands.

Ramírez spent the last week of November meeting with European business leaders to discuss opportunities to take advantage of Mexico’s nearshoring boom.

One of the most important agreements was a 2.42 billion peso (US $139 million) contract with Dutch company APM Terminals to expand the Lázaro Cárdenas port terminal. The work is due to be carried out by May next year.

Other key deals include a commitment by the Austrian company Agrana Fruit to develop a fruit processing factory in Jacona, and a coordination agreement with Austria’s Andritz Group to modernize the Francisco J. Múgica dam.

“Synergy on green energies was also achieved with Siemens Energy, and the possibility of installing a hydrogen generating plant in Lázaro Cárdenas to serve the industrial, transportation and automotive sectors was evaluated,” Ramírez said.

The Michoacán government also committed to investing 3.2 billion pesos (US $184 million) in manufacturing metal structures for the planned Uruapan cable bus, which is being manufactured at a plant in Austria.

Other possibilities Ramírez discussed on his tour included opening a liaison office in Germany to facilitate administrative procedures for European companies seeking to establish operations in Michoacán.

Ramírez highlighted that around 70% of the nearshoring investments in Michoacán during the first two years of his administration were of European origin, a total of 49.1 billion pesos (US $2.8 billion) since October 2021.

“Not only are companies in Asia going to come; there are also European companies that want to come or that want to expand their operations in Mexico to integrate into the North American market,” said Michoacán Economic Development Minister, Claudio Méndez Fernández.

Méndez added that the state is attractive to European businesses because it has strong connectivity not only to North America – via a 32,000-kilometer railway network that links the state directly to the U.S. and Canada – but also to Asian markets, via the Pacific port of Lázaro Cárdenas. This access is set to become even smoother, with the expansion to four lanes of the Siglo XXI highway that links the port to Michoacán’s state capital.  

With reports from Milenio and El Economista