At Siemens’ high-voltage equipment plant about two hours’ drive from Mexico City, workers move about the polished floor, assembling and testing parts of circuit breakers for use in electrical substations.
Until a few months ago, the 160 parts for these enormous devices, with protruding poles that give them the appearance of stage props from a set of Frankenstein’s workshop, were assembled in India or China.
But today, the assembly is carried out in Mexico. By March next year, most of those 160 parts, which currently come from Germany and Asia, will be produced there too. The company has also chosen Mexico as the location for a new surge-arrester project instead of investing to expand production in China.