The north of the country continues to be the most dynamic region at the national level in its ability to attract relocations of production processes from Asia. The efforts made hand in hand with local governments and the networks of business associations and clusters have paid off, since they facilitate the installation of investments and connect with the network of suppliers to successfully start their processes, whether manufacturing or logistics.

The north also has skilled labor and competitive production costs when compared to nearby cities on the United States side.

Consult here: Chihuahua faces a challenge due to little speculative industrial construction

Monterrey is the market that stands out the most at the end of the first quarter of 2023 with a gross industrial demand of 371 thousand square meters. Monterrey manages to surpass its closest competitor, Mexico City, by more than 40%, which ends the quarter with almost 262,000 square meters.

Demand has been equally activated in all groups of areas, distributing practically a third of the areas in small warehouses of less than 10,000 square meters, medium-sized ones from 10 to 20,000, and large ones that exceed 20,000 square meters.

Apodaca continues to be the main interest corridor for demand in Monterrey, concentrating 41%, followed by Santa Catarina and Guadalupe each with approximately 22%.

Tijuana, Ciudad Juárez and Saltillo registered quarterly demands for 135, 115 and 91 thousand square meters, respectively.

The case of Saltillo is where the greatest increase in the period has been registered, exceeding the demand registered in the same quarter of 2022 by more than 3 times, mainly driven by its proximity to Monterrey. 

Ramos Arizpe in Saltillo manages to activate almost alldemand in 1Q 2023 and its proximity to Santa Catarina outline it for significant growth in the remainder of the year.

Tijuana since September 2022 has managed to start a vacancy recovery trend and closes in March 2023 with 1.4%, which it has achieved with the strong activation of industrial construction. 

In the last 6 months they have not stopped adding new industrial projects to the works in progress and at the end of March more than 540,000 square meters of industrial buildings were still in progress.

Of interest: Industrial market exceeds 5 million m2 under construction nationwide in 1Q 2023

Ciudad Juárez has been another of the favorite markets for developers and especially for investment trusts or fibers that consider this key market to position their portfolios, as has been the case of Fibra MTY and Fibra Upsite in recent quarters. The demand for 1Q 2023 has moved between 6 and 43 thousand square meters, although the preference is concentrated between 10 and 20 thousand square meters.

Mexicali and Chihuahua also ended a quarter with a gross industrial demand of 73 and 57 thousand square meters, respectively. Both reached almost 10% of national demand.

Reynosa and Tecate complete the group of eight northern markets that Solili monitors and although both started the year with cautious demand, they have the necessary conditions for a scenario of increases motivated by low vacancy and rising rental prices.