MEXICO CITY — Injection molding press manufacturers enjoying a sales boom in Mexico are likely to experience another three years of growth before the market levels out, executives said at the Plastimagen trade show in Mexico City.
“I think this good growth market will last two years, hopefully three years, and will then stabilize,” Guillermo Fasterling, manager of Arburg GmbH & Co. KG's Mexico branch, Arburg SA de CV, said in an interview.
Fasterling told Plastics News that Arburg's business in Mexico this year grew between 10 and 20 percent in relation to 2013, “mostly because of the [Mexican] automotive industry, which is the main driver.”
Between 50 and 60 percent of Lossburg, Germany-based Arburg's business in Mexico is with the automotive industry, he said.
Fasterling said Arburg will add four to the staff of 16 at its technical center in Querétaro, opened in 2013, will extend the building in 2015 and open a show room in Monterrey, northern Mexico, in February or March.
David Rodrigo Muñoz Barrera, managing director of Wittmann Battenfeld México SA de CV, said that “the situation in Mexico, especially in the automotive industry, is fantastic.”
The Vienna, Austria-based injection press and auxiliary equipment manufacturer's sales in Mexico in 2014 totaled $30 million, he said, compared with $23 million in 2013.
“Most of [the increased business] is coming from the automotive industry,” Muñoz said.
“We have new clients for injection molding machines,” he said, adding that 45 percent of Wittmann Battenfeld's sales in Mexico this year has come from the sale of injection presses and 55 percent from robots and other auxiliary equipment.
“Last year, it was 30 percent [injection] and 70 percent [auxiliaries],” Muñoz said.
He said that through the third week of November the company had sold 50 injection molding presses in Mexico, mainly to the automotive industry, compared with 30-35 last year. “The largest machine we have sold has a clamping force of 1,300 tons.”
Wittmann Battenfeld's biggest press has a clamping force of 1,600 tons. “Next year I think we'll sell five or six of them in Mexico,” Muñoz said.
