A new US $180 million Metalsa auto parts manufacturing plant was officially inaugurated in Apaseo el Grande, Guanajuato on Wednesday.
The chassis manufacturing facility will be located in a Toyota industrial park as part of an agreement between both companies. Metalsa will supply parts to Toyota’s assembly plants in Guanajuato and Baja California. The new plant is expected to produce 308,000 chassis annually.
Toyota’s agreement with Metalsa will allow the Japanese manufacturer to bolster its electrification strategy for the production of the new hybrid Tacoma truck model. The plant will be the first Tier-1 supplier (meaning it provides products directly to major car manufacturers) in Mexico to have a facility outside of the northern border states.
Metalsa president Jorge Garza Garza explained that the plant will be the company’s first zero-emissions operation, thanks to the exclusive use of electrical equipment. The facility will also use cutting-edge Industry 4.0 technology — a term meaning the incorporation of cloud computing, analytics and machine learning in manufacturing operations to improve agility and production flow.
The new plant will use include automation, artificial intelligence and reconfigurability, the latter meaning that processes can be quickly reconfigured by loading different computing code.
Guanajuato Governor Diego Sinhue Rodríguez Vallejo, present at the inauguration, stressed that Metalsa’s investment will add to the more than US $6 billion in investments the state has already attracted during his term.
Many other companies are carrying out expansion projects due to Guanajuato’s qualified workforce and positive relationships with local authorities, he said.
“I’m very pleased to see how these projects are turning out. We were here in February to begin construction, and today investment from this great company amounts to US $180 million, adding to the US $6.5 billion we have announced during this six-year term, exceeding our proposed goal with a year still remaining,” the governor said.
Guanajuato, along with the rest of the Bajío region, has benefitted from the nearshoring phenomenon that’s spurred manufacturing investment throughout Mexico, particularly in the auto manufacturing industry.
With reports from Forbes Mèxico and Mexico Now
