Mexico Port Congestion: The Busiest Weeks of the Year - Desteia

Mexico Port Congestion: The Busiest Weeks of the Year

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 Desteia, 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.

TEUs Handled thus Far into 2024 by Top Mexican Ports

A donut chart showing the share of TEUs handled thus far into 2024 by top Mexican ports

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 from 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.

Top Mexican Ports by Number of Days Above Average Cargo Load (2019-2024)

A stacked bar graph showing the share of days between 2019 and 2024 that top Mexican ports exceeded the average value of import and export volumes combined for the overall period.

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.

Top Mexican Ports by Number of Days Above Saturation Cargo Load (2019-2024)

A stacked bar graph showing the share of days between 2019 and 2024 that top Mexican ports exceeded 60% below the maximum recorded value of import and export volumes combined for the overall period.

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.

Our data 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.

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.

Average Monthly Cargo at Top Mexican Ports (2019-2024)

A line graph showing average monthly cargo at top Mexican ports between 2019 and 2024

The report shows:

At Desteia, 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.

Next, we found that Lázaro Cárdenas exhibits a highly variant structure week to week. Meanwhile, between weeks 17 and 41, the port records high peaks of activity that could well correlate to disruptions from saturation.

Lázaro Cárdenas: Average Weekly Cargo VS Total Average (2019-2024)

Similarly, for Manzanillo, we found a concentrated active period starting week 16 and ending week 32.

Manzanillo: Average Weekly Cargo VS Total Average (2019-2024)

Veracruz, on the other hand, exhibits traffic increases as early as week 10.

Veracruz: Average Weekly Cargo VS Total Average (2019-2024)

Finally, for Altamira, we found a great variance week to week when it came to activity.

Altamira: Average Weekly Cargo VS Total Average (2019-2024)

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 Desteia, we believe operators should have the most relevant information to make the best decisions for their logistics strategies.