October 22, 2024
As Mexico becomes an increasingly important player in global trade, there is one key source of concern for logistics operators: the potential for Mexican port saturation. This, in great part, comes from the rise of Mexico as a global destination for manufacturing, as nearshoring pushes Western countries towards friendlier nations. In this context, Mexico has emerged as a major supply chain destination, even surpassing China as the largest trade partner to the U.S.
But, with this increased attention, one could reasonably ask if there is reason to believe that the country’s ports could handle the growth in activity? Mexico is now in the middle of an upwards trajectory that could bring dozens of factories and millions of dollars in investment. Yet, is it ready to handle the heat?
At Auba, we wanted to help answer the question by doing what we do best: leveraging data to find key insights that operators can act upon. So we looked at historical data from the four largest ports in Mexico: Manzanillo, Lázaro Cárdenas, Veracruz, and Altamira. As the chart below shows, just these four ports together represent 91.37% of all container trade in the country—at least when it comes to the available data for 2024. In focusing our research on these ports, we found one crucial insight: Mexican ports are very much fit to handle the growth in trade—and rarely do they experience large shocks in trade value.
But before we look at our results, let’s look at the data. Because, at least from the last couple of months, one could assume that there is some truth behind potential concerns. Just last week, the port of Manzanillo—Mexico’s largest—suffered from major congestions, leaving 17 ships at bay waiting to enter the harbor. This happened just weeks after Hurricane John forced the second largest port in the country, Lázaro Cárdenas, to stop operations—and hurricanes become ever more present in global logistics.
So, given these disruptions, one would expect to find similar threats to Mexican trade. More specifically, following the recent disruptions at Manzanillo, one could reasonably expect events where trade volumes in Mexican ports reach such levels that authorities become saturated and struggle to handle cargo. But, as our efforts to find data show, that is rarely the case.
To prove this point, we used a comprehensive data set form the International Monetary Fund (IMF) which encompasses all trade volumes for the majority of ports around the world since 2019, including Lázaro Cárdenas, Manzanillo, Veracruz, and Altamira—which, again, represent almost all the container trade that enters Mexico.
As an initial metric of port activity, we calculated the average trade activity handled in a port on any given day across the five year period considered by the IMF. Namely, after adding the values for imports and exports, we found the average trade handled at each port in Mexico. Thereafter, we identified if days fell above or below that average to get an idea of how busy Mexico’s ports tend to be.
In doing the analysis described above we found that, by and large, Mexican ports tend to have trade values that consistently fall below average activity. In fact, over the last five years, both Manzanillo and Altamira fell below average port activity more than 58% of the time, while Lázaro Cárdenas (57.6%) and Veracruz (54.9%) followed closely after. This means that, as the graph below shows, Mexican ports tend to operate below the average levels of activity most of the time.
So it seems like, in most cases, major ports in Mexico are operating below their average capability. But the graph above still suggests that they operate above capacity over 40% of the time. How bad can these disruptions get?
To identify this, we isolated the busiest day at each of the four ports recorded by the IMF. Namely, the day in which they handled the most cargo possible without shutting down. Then, to create a range, we looked at any days that were below 60% of the maximum cargo handled by the port at their highest point of saturation. This, in turn, gives us a better understanding of how ports deal in crisis and not just how busy they tend to be.
Our data, in turn, suggests that the top Mexican ports exhibit shocks very rarely. In the data set examined, Lázaro Cárdenas had the most number of days close to saturation, but the number was a low 5.89%. It was followed by Veracruz (5.16%), Manzanillo (4.26%), and, in a distant fourth, Altamira (1.75%).
Now, as most logistics operators can tell, these shocks to logistics are often correlated with larger cyclical trends. Some ports are likely favored by retailers, making them susceptible to shocks around holiday seasons as producers gear up for increased sales. Others might be preferred by manufacturing companies that could import goods earlier in the year to meet the demand of suppliers ahead of the holidays. So, although the four largest ports in Mexico exhibit similar rates of activity, these might vary on a monthly basis.
In order to better understand these trends, we looked at the average traffic handled each month at the ports examined over the last five years. This creates a snapshot of their average activity month to month as shown in the figure below.
As the graph shows, there are actually many key differences in port activity. Manzanillo, for once, sees a growth in cargo activity between April and July, while Lázaro Cpardenas exhibits a number of bumps leading to a rise in cargo in August and a decrease towards the end of the year. Veracruz, meanwhile, has two distinct peaks in operations in April and October, while Altamita concentrates activities in the first half of the year.
At Auba, we wanted to go even deeper into the cyclical nature of Mexico’s top ports. To do so, we decided to look at week to week trends over the last five years instead of monthly patterns. Then, we plotted these individually for each port and compared the trends to the average traffic exhibited between 2019 and 2023. While these are only estimates, given historical trends, these could well be the best estimates to port activity in 2025, which companies can use to plan shipments and avoid potential saturation.
First, we found that Lázaro Cárdenas exhibits a highly variant structure week to week, with noticeable off weeks between weeks 9 and 16, as well as after week 42. Meanwhile, between weeks 17 and 41, the port records high peaks of activity that could well correlate to disruptions from saturation.
Similarly, for Manzanillo, we found a concentrated active period starting week 16 and ending week 32. This, of course, is far shorter than Lázaro Cárdenas and suggests that there are far fewer busy weeks at the port even though it handles more cargo in total than its rival.
Veracruz, on the other hand, exhibits traffic increases as early as week 10 and, although there is a hiatus between weeks 20 and 28, thereafter, the port goes through a number of additional increases in traffic, thus suggesting a volatile nature to the port during the second half of the year.
Finally, for Altamira, we found a great variance week to week when it came to activity, with a number of peaks concentrating between week 12 and week 39. Thereafter, however, the sudden changes in activity continue albeit they tend to fall below average traffic for the period. This suggests that Altamira is similar in volatility to Lázaro Cárdenas, which shippers should consider when planning routes.
Put together, these graphs show a snapshot of Mexican trade and how top ports tend to behave. As companies decide to use Mexico as a manufacturing hub through nearshoring, they should consider these trends to better plan their supply chain strategies. At Auba, we believe operators should have the most relevant information to make the best decisions for their logistics strategies. If you’d like to access even more analytics like these, make sure to schedule a demo of our product below:
