Mexico’s Aerospace Industry: A Guide for Manufacturers

Mexico builds parts for aircraft it does not assemble. Its plants machine engine components and make landing gear and structural parts. They also build the wiring and interiors for airliners, business jets and helicopters finished in the United States, Europe and elsewhere.

Foreign aerospace manufacturers look at Mexico for practical reasons. Order books are long, many plants are short of capacity, and skilled machinists and inspectors are hard to hire in the United States. Mexico has an experienced aerospace workforce and an established base of aerospace plants. It sits within trucking distance of U.S. customers. Manufacturers weigh its labor costs alongside productivity, logistics, training and the investment it takes to start up.

How many aerospace companies are in Mexico

At the end of the first half of 2024, Mexico had 386 companies dedicated to aerospace manufacturing, spread across 19 states, according to the federal government. The same statement, in April 2025, counted more than 50,000 direct jobs in the industry and about 190,000 indirect ones.

The industry’s output has grown with that base. The U.S. International Trade Administration puts Mexico’s aerospace exports at about $10.7 billion in 2024, and says the sector has grown an average of 14% a year since 2004.

What Mexico’s aerospace plants make

Most of the work is manufacturing. The Trade Administration reports that manufacturing makes up 79% of the sector’s revenue, maintenance and repair 10%, and design and engineering 11%. Inside manufacturing, the work falls into four broad kinds:

• Precision components for engines and aircraft structures.
• Electrical systems, such as wire harnesses.
• Assemblies, such as interiors and landing gear.
• Supporting special processes that hold parts to specification, such as heat treatment, plating and non-destructive testing.

Mexico’s own customs data shows where recent growth has gone. These are Mexico’s reported exports for three product lines, taken from the UN Comtrade database. They are a slice of the industry, not the whole of it, but they show what is moving. All three show strong U.S. demand: 90%, 86% and 75% of their 2025 exports went to the United States.

Engine components are the largest of the three. Pursuit Aerospace, for example, makes engine components on a Tetakawi Campus in Sonora.

Who already makes aerospace parts in Mexico

The aircraft makers buy from Mexico even though they do not assemble airliners there. The Trade Administration’s 2026 guide counts 26 Mexican suppliers to Boeing, 36 to Airbus and 13 to Embraer. Around those buyers sits a layer of large suppliers with their own plants in Mexico, including Safran, Honeywell and Bombardier.

Most of the foreign money in the industry comes from the United States. In the Ministry of Economy’s figures for foreign direct investment in aerospace manufacturing from 2006 through 2025, U.S. companies accounted for about 62%, Canadian companies about 25% and French companies about 11%. In the first half of 2026, the U.S. share was about 71%.

For a manufacturer weighing Mexico, this matters because your customers may already buy from the country. If you supply one of these companies today, part of its supply base may already ship from Mexico. BAE Systems, for instance, builds components for commercial aircraft at its plant in Guaymas.

Two common ways manufacturers use Mexico

The first is to make parts in Mexico for the customers you already serve. The plant in Mexico becomes part of your own network. Its output ships to the same OEMs and Tier 1s you sell to today. Most often, it crosses the U.S. border to reach them. It adds capacity without adding a new customer to win.

The second is to supply the aerospace plants already operating in Mexico. The Trade Administration says the main opportunity in Mexico is supplying the plants already there. It adds that aircraft makers struggle to find “specialized, fully certified local suppliers.” A supplier that qualifies locally can become a nearby source for those plants.

Many companies end up doing both. Either way, setting up an aerospace manufacturing operation in Mexico comes down to a few decisions: where to locate, how to hire and train, how your customers will approve the new site, and whether the numbers justify the move.

Where Mexico’s aerospace clusters are

The Trade Administration names five main aerospace clusters: Baja California, Sonora, Chihuahua, Querétaro and Nuevo León. Each grew around different anchors. Baja California sits next to California’s aerospace base. Chihuahua and Querétaro grew around large investments by global suppliers. Sonora built depth in engine and turbine components, with local suppliers for heat treatment and non-destructive testing in the Guaymas area. Mazatlán, in Sinaloa, is a newer site for aerospace work. For what each cluster makes, and a process-by-process look at Guaymas, see Mexico’s aerospace clusters.

The right location depends on whether the processes your part needs can be done nearby, to your customers’ requirements, at the volume you need. Take a machined engine bracket. It may start as a forging, then go through machining, heat treatment, inspection and a coating. For each step you would buy rather than do yourself, check two things. Is a nearby supplier qualified for that process under your customers’ rules? And does it have room for your volume? Then compare the total operating cost and logistics. Count any steps that would still cross the border. A large cluster helps only if those answers hold. The second test is people: how many skilled workers you can hire and keep there.

CPP in Mazatlán: how one manufacturer did it

Consolidated Precision Products, which makes castings for the aerospace and defense industries, is a useful example of the first route. Customer demand was outrunning what CPP could hire for in the United States. Jeremy Main, a senior vice president at CPP, describes the pressure behind the move:

The aerospace and defense business is growing dramatically right now. Our customers are all knocking on our door asking us how much we can produce. And so in order to grow and meet our customers’ demand, we’ve got to find the people to do it.

Jeremy Main, Senior Vice President, Consolidated Precision Products

CPP looked at several places in Mexico with Tetakawi and chose Mazatlán. There, on a Tetakawi Campus, its team performs non-destructive testing and repair on aerospace and defense castings. According to the CPP case study, Tetakawi’s HR and operations support were on site from the start. Its specialists take the hiring, shipping, filings and regulatory work off CPP’s desk.

The technical training was CPP’s own. It trained its first Mazatlán team at its sites in Guaymas, Ensenada and Minneapolis, and those people now train others; the case study puts hands-on training at about eight months before volume work. The case study also notes nine technical schools within thirty miles of the Mazatlán Campus. CPP reports that the site now leads the company in retention. Main describes Tetakawi’s part this way:

So not only is it a support group that helps with any items that pop up, but it’s also that execution group that actually helps you get it done.

Jeremy Main, Senior Vice President, Consolidated Precision Products

Who does the work in Mexico’s aerospace plants

The skills that matter most to an aerospace manufacturer are hands-on: machinists, inspectors, assemblers, welders and the technicians who run special processes. Mexico builds them through training close to the plants. Querétaro has a university founded for aerospace. Sonora has technical schools that train for the engine and casting work in the region. On the Roca Fuerte Campus in Guaymas, a training center gives new hires hands-on practice before they reach the production floor.

How long it takes to staff a plant depends on the roles and processes involved. People need training and sign-off before they work on a customer’s part. An experienced local workforce can help, though competition for the same people matters too. How recruiting, training and keeping a workforce in Mexico works day to day is a large part of how fast a new plant reaches volume.

Where Mexico’s aerospace base is still thin

That said, Mexico is not deep in everything, and a manufacturer deciding where to put work should know where it is thinner.

Certified suppliers are still scarce. That shortage is an opening for suppliers that can qualify. It also means some of your own inputs, such as forgings or semi-finished parts, may still come from outside Mexico.

Approvals and certifications for the new site. Your company stays responsible for its quality system, certifications and customer approvals. Whether they cover a new plant has to be established: the site is audited in its own right, and each customer decides when parts made there are approved for its programs. Some customers require Nadcap accreditation for special processes such as heat treatment or non-destructive testing. If yours do, plan for those audits too. PRI, which runs the Nadcap program, says a first-time accreditation typically takes six to 12 months.

Some work needs a separate review. Defense work and export-controlled data raise their own questions about what can be made where, and who can see the drawings. Those questions belong with your counsel and your customer before a site is chosen.

Trade rules can change. The United States investigated aircraft and engine imports under Section 232. In July 2026 the President decided against immediate tariffs and asked for negotiations with trading partners, with an update due within 180 days.

How to evaluate an aerospace operation in Mexico

So if you are weighing Mexico for aerospace work, four steps will tell you more than any industry total.

Decide which route you are taking.

Making parts for your existing customers and supplying plants already in Mexico lead to different locations, customers and approval plans.

Map your part’s processes.

List each step from raw material to shipment, mark which ones you would do yourself and which you would buy, and check whether qualified suppliers with capacity for the outsourced processes exist where you are looking.

Build the business case.

Weigh the added capacity and the savings against what the move costs: the investment, the work to qualify the site, the inventory in transit and the time your managers will spend on it.

Talk to someone already running a plant there.

Ask how long customer approvals took, how hiring went in the first year, and what they would do differently.

Tetakawi has helped companies manufacture in Mexico since 1986, and more than 15 aerospace manufacturers run their own plants on our Campuses today. That work usually starts with the evaluation. We compare the Campuses that could support your operation and build the full cost of running your plant on each. Then you visit, meet the team that would support you, and talk with manufacturers already running plants there.

When you go ahead, the support runs through a shelter services arrangement. In the usual arrangement, a Mexican company holds the operating authorizations, such as the IMMEX program, and employs the workforce. The foreign manufacturer runs its own production. A Campus adds established industrial space, shared infrastructure and an on-site support organization. Tetakawi provides the building and the agreed recruiting, employment administration, customs, logistics and compliance services. In Mexico, the importer and exporter of record is on Tetakawi’s side of the arrangement; entering the United States, your company is.

Your side stays yours. You control production, process and quality. Tetakawi is not a contract manufacturer. Your company remains responsible for certification and customer approval of the new operation.

If you are working out where Mexico could fit in your production network, we can help you evaluate an aerospace operation in Mexico, built around your parts, your processes and your customers.

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