The Insourcing Pioneer
Proximity to California, low cost production and highly skilled workers are the three selling points for Tijuana, Mexico, to attract global businesses – among others also photovoltaic business.
Tijuana is bordering San Diego back to back and has been growing a work force of more than 180,000 skilled workers, since the NAFTA free trade agreement in the early 1990s suddenly spurred up the industry.
More than 600 so called maquiladoras, sub-contracting factories of global companies, with a direct and indirect work force of 640,000 people are the pioneers of the outsourcing business.
Progress will happen
Looking at developments in the Mexican market, Molla sees high political efforts coming from the federal and local government, but also says that progress “is slower than what we thought. But it will happen.” On the other hand, he is excited to watch the progress in construction of Valle Las Palmas, a sustainable city project near Tijuana. The master plan, which was announced in 2007, includes 300,000 houses for low and middleincome families starting at US$ 18,000 and is supposed to be finished by 2030.
There will be schools, hospitals, a zoo, parks and a university campus, as well as light industry nearby. Two construction companies, Geo and Urbi, won with their designs and divided the 13,000 hectares site into two separate areas, which will slowly grow together. Both companies have been building thousands of low income units in Mexico, and Urbi was awarded various architectural awards for its innovative and sustainable design for Valle Las Palmas. Construction started this summer, and families began signing contracts in October. “This is very unique, and it’s already happening,” says Molla.
According to Geo, one of the construction companies, the plan also includes solar thermal units on roofs and a solar farm, but no partner has been announced yet. When it comes to the development of private rooftop photovoltaics, the generation of electricity can basically only be used for private needs, since the government owned electricity company CFE has no feed-in system in place. “Its easier to focus on expanding PV production and electricity export to the US,” says Flavio Olivieri from DEITAC.
Even though Mexico announced efforts for CO2 reductions of 50 million tons per year, and is investing in cleaning up pollution from cars and its industry, the real market growth in the clean sector is happening in the neighboring state California. “They have a 33 % goal of renewables by 2020,” says Javier Martínez Luna, the President of the maquiladora association AIM, “and we are the answer to that.” Rubenius, who recently announced to build a 1,000 MW energy storage facility in the Silicon Border science park, chose the Mexican site because of the market potential in California, according to Jacob Rikard Nielsen, Vice President of Business Development. After the first 50 MW storage are built, Nielsen says, Rubenius is also looking into Mexico to possibly expand manufacturing capacities to produce sodium-sulfur (NAS) batteries close to the site.
