Metropolitan Aerospace Cluster committed to attracting strategic companies

With the objective of strengthening the aerospace and aeronautical sectors, the Metropolitan Aerospace Cluster was created after an initiative was presented at the Felipe Angeles International Airport (AIFA) in 2024 to promote between 7 or 8 strategic sectors, as stated by Esteban Carrera, president of the organization.

In an interview with A21, Carrera, president of the Metropolitan Aerospace Cluster explained that, in the aerospace sector, the aim is to strengthen both supply and specialized services, while in aeronautics, the focus is related to airports and maintenance.

“We are looking for companies that want to participate in aerospace, that are in other sectors, but want to join this one; it is going to be a very different cluster from the others,” he said.

Carrera explained that this cluster seeks to bring together companies that are within the sector, but also those that come from other sectors to be suppliers or create products and services.

The premise, he said, is that the companies are from the states that make up the Metropolitan Valley (Mexico City, State of Mexico and Hidalgo), but will seek to add companies from the south-southeast, that is, from the states of Puebla, Morelos, Veracruz, Tabasco and Quintana Roo.

He said that 90% of the companies that provide services to the airports are from outside the Metropolitan Zone, and only between 6% and 10% are local companies.

The president indicated that the reason why there are no companies in the Metropolitan Zone of the Valley of Mexico is because there was no public policy for these states to have that productive vocation.

He pointed out that in order to be an aerospace supplier there must be accreditations and a series of regulations that have to be met, but if the Government does not have an impact on a local public policy, it will be difficult to do this.

The directive pointed out that in the center of the country there has been no public policy or interested companies, despite having important airports such as AIFA and the Mexico City International Airport (AICM), while in other states the industry has advanced, such as Guanajuato, Queretaro, Monterrey.

Carrera added that this is the newest cluster in the country, so it will seek to twin with other clusters, learn from their strengths and even their weaknesses, in order to be a different cluster that will enhance the growth of the sector.

“This is an industry of the future where -yes or yes- we have to participate seriously in the center of the country and in the south-southeast,” he said.

He mentioned that they, as a cluster, can contribute topics such as digitalization, maintenance, new technologies and industries of the future. “To look for what we produce in Mexico, if we make the vertical airplane, the seat of the future, the additive of the future, we have to find a product or service.”

The president of the Metropolitan Aerospace Cluster asserted that the aerospace industry in Mexico is more about manufacturing than creation, so the country has been left behind, that is why it is important to go more to creation, design, generate something made in Mexico that is used all over the world.

He mentioned that this cluster is working with Gustavo Cabrera, director of Aerospace and Space Industry of the Ministry of Economy (SE) to promote this industry in the center of the country with companies that want to join.