The CEO of Festo in Mexico, Bernd Schreiber, hopes that his firm will be able to take advantage of the current automotive “boom” in Mexico and its intentions to double its sales by 2020 with new technologies in industrial automation.
In an interview with a Mexican news agency, Schreiber said that the market in Mexico has a value of about $250 million, and he sees it as an area of opportunity for further growth.
He stressed that the main industry where Festo, a German industrial control and automation company, operates is the automotive industry. In recent years Festo’s automotive operations have been growing, with investments from Audi, Ford, BMW, Mercedes-Benz and Kia.
Schreiber also stressed that the company has a significant presence in the food and beverages, pharmaceutical, paper and textile sectors, with a catalog of about 30,000 technology products, including pneumatics, electronics, sensors and cameras.
“We had double-digit growth rates every year from 2010 to 2015. We had a bump with the change of government and fiscal reform, but we hope to double turnovers with the same number of employees by 2020,” he said.
Schreiber said that Mexico is the eighth-most important country for the company, and this is calling attention from headquarters.
“The Fourth Industrial Revolution is just beginning. We all known the internet, and everybody talks about it. It is starting. Companies are starting to invest. It is a transition, impelled by new technologies,” he said.
Schreiber noted that currently 85 percent of its products come from imports and the remaining 15 percent are manufactured in Mexico.
ROBERTO NOGUEZ