Bolstering the entire supply chain will require beefed up Mexican industrial park security.

The nation’s C-PAT equivalent trusted shipper program known as the Nuevo Esquema de Empresas Certificadas (NEEC), is will soon expand to encompass the security of the entire Mexican manufacturing supply chain. The NEEC, which began in 2011 as a voluntary program that focused solely on export shipments in 2011, grew to include a focus on imports, as well, in pursuit of achieving its goal of maintaining the integrity of the country’s supply chain. The program, as it applies to shippers, is a voluntary one whose participation carries with it certain benefits. Some of these include:

  • Streamlined Mexican customs compliance checks and processing;
  • Quicker movement through Customs through specially designated transit lanes;
  • Enhanced trust by Mexican customs authorities;
  • Fewer inspections, and priority processing, for those remaining inspections for shipments originating in Mexico;
  • Improved inventory cycle time;
  • Favored compliance status for special trade partnership programs.

Although still voluntary, the program received a boost when the Ford Motor Company recently began a push to encourage its Mexican suppliers to participate. Ford executives in Mexico view program, as well as its success, as playing an important role in the company’s present and future efforts to form a “more solid logistics network” for itself.

Mexico is prioritizing the end to end security of its supply chain

Recently, the scope of the Nuevo Esquema de Empresas Certificadas (NEEC) broadened within the context of Mexico’s overall strategy to professionalize and to protect each of the individual links that make up its manufacturing supply chain. At a meeting between Salvador Arellano, the president of the Confederación de Operadores Económicos Autorizados de América Latina, España y El Caribe, or Coalec, officials from Mexico’s Servicio de Administración Tributaria’s Administración General de Auditoría de Comercio Exterior (AGACE) and leaders of the Mexican Association of Industrial Parks (AMPIP), the participating parties came together to discuss plans on extending the NEEC program to include an additional focus on Mexican industrial park security. AMPIP is a national organization that is made up of fifty-six members. Application of NEEC supply chain security criteria to the industrial parks and real-estate held by this group of businesses,

investors and public entities could potential encompass a total of more than two hundred and fifty thousand square feet. The aforementioned parties are in the process of analyzing a draft document that will outline how the NEEC will be applied to Mexican industrial park security, and expect, that, by the end of the second half of this year, at least four industrial properties will be newly certified.

AMPIP members’ industrial parks and buildings house both national and export industry firms, which employ more than 1.7 million direct labor workers. Given the size of this link in the nations supply chain applying the NEEC program to include a concentration on Mexican industrial park security is the next logical step in guaranteeing its safety and reliability.