Mexico City — Toolmakers from across the world are investing in Mexico, but the country is as much as three decades behind the leading countries in the discipline, according to Portuguese mold specialist Luis Salvador.
Only 2-3 percent of the tools required by manufacturers in Mexico are made in Mexico, he told Plastics News at Plastimagen Mexico.
"A lot of companies, especially Canadian and Portuguese, are coming to Mexico now," he said. "Unfortunately, they are 30 years late. The Mexican government should have invested in training toolmakers a long time ago as was done in Portugal."
Many of the toolmakers setting up production facilities in Mexico are doing so at the insistence of their customers, who want to ensure the continuity of technical support, Salvador said.
He is the former representative in Mexico of Portuguese toolmaker Neológica Comércio Internacional Lda., of Marinha Grande, which, he said, stopped trading in 2018.
Before its demise, Neológica won a six-figure dollar contract to manufacture six- and eight-cavity molds for producing plastic parts that will replace ceramic components at a thermoelectric power plant in Monterrey, northern Mexico.
"The molds are on their way," Salvador said, who has remained with the project. "I hope we'll start making injection molds in Monterrey in about two weeks' time."