Earlier this year, Mexico broke a nearly decade long trend by overtaking China and becoming the largest trade partner with the United States. Free trade deals like NAFTA and the later U.S. Mexico Canada Agreement have paved the road for Mexico to use its large manufacturing industry to grow their economy. With tensions rising and a trade war in full swing with China, the US has looked to Mexico and this change has only fueled Santa Teresa according to Jerry Pacheco, President of the Border Industrial Association.
“We are literally a part of the global supply chain here in Santa Teresa,” said Pacheco.
Pacheco recently spoke to New Mexico state lawmakers on the importance and future of Santa Teresa. Pacheco said with the Santa Teresa Port of entry being the 6th busiest on the U.S.-Mexico border in the country in terms of trade, lawmakers have been keeping a close eye on the development.
“Santa Teresa right now is accounting for about 60% of New Mexico's exports to the world and half of the roughly $5 billion that we do as a state about $3 billion goes to Mexico so it is playing a significant role in upping the exports to Mexico, this little part of New Mexico,” Pacheco said.
Due to its proximity to Mexico, companies can enjoy the manufacturing benefits of Mexico while still making the materials in the United States. This has led to many different goods being traded across the border including electronics.
“Foxconn is on the other side of Santa Teresa in what's called San Jerónimo and they are making up to 70,000 Dell computers a day and so Santa Teresa supplies Foxconn with all the components to make computers and tablets. We have metal fabricated goods crossing the border we have electronics we have a lot of corrugated stuff that we are shipping to Mexico so anything that you need to make something that's what's going across the border,” Pacheco said.
Santa Teresa’s growth has been fueled by many companies coming from out of state or out of the country. With only two of the around 75 companies in the industrial parks being from New Mexico, Santa Teresa has created a large tax base and brought in outside investment.
“We have CN Wire which makes copper wire from Turkey, we have Tesco a German company that makes auto sensors, we have a Canadian company, a Japanese company DA Inc., we have a Spanish company, those wind blades you see on the highway are staged out of Santa Teresa, we have three Taiwanese companies and one Chinese company,” Pacheco said.
The economic opportunity of the Texas, New Mexico and Mexican border is something that Franklin Mountain Packaging knows well, according to General Manager John Perullo. With being just a stone's throw from the border their success has led to them breaking ground on another facility.
“We chose Santa Teresa because of its proximity to the Mexican market to the west coast and really because of the governor and the local groups put together a really inviting package for us to come to New Mexico as we were looking at El Paso and other places in Texas as well as the Phoenix market,” Perullo said.
John Perullo said that after acquiring a business on the Mexico side of the border, Franklin Mountain Packaging has enjoyed using the strengths of both countries to their advantage as they make a wide range of cardboard products.
“The acquisition south of the border allows us to really get into business that is both high volume and high tech which you can see in our facility here but also products that require a lot of manual labor or piece work we are now in a place where our own company can perform these tasks,” Perullo said.
Monti Inc. is a metal machining and fabrication company from Ohio. Plant Manager Nate Duhl says that they are currently working on opening up a plant in Santa Teresa and should be up and running by the end of the year.
“We are working on a partnership right now with a coding company in the Juárez area. So yeah, we will have partnerships and try to utilize services in Mexico and across the border,” Duhl said.
Santa Teresa's growth is far from slowing down. With new highways to provide faster transportation in the works and a jetport that will allow larger planes to land near the industrial parks receiving funding, many predict that this growth will not slow down anytime soon.
