The import-export business in Santa Teresa is booming and stakeholders remain bullish
LAS CRUCES – U.S. Sen. Martin Heinrich, D-NM, on Wednesday hosted about a dozen stakeholders in his Las Cruces field office for an update on the Santa Teresa Port of Entry and the port’s role in trade with Mexico.
2019, they said, was a banner year of port — despite being a year of uncertainty revolving around trade relations with Mexico and challenges surrounding the port’s infrastructure and staffing. In 2019, the Santa Teresa Port of Entry saw a 17.4 percent growth in overall trade, with more than $30 billion in imports and exports, according to figures recently released by the U.S. Census Bureau. This was enough to rank Santa Teresa fifth among the nation’s southern ports of entry.
It ranked fourth in exports and sixth in imports.
A year of accomplishments
Jerry Pacheco, president of the Border Industrial Association, said Santa Teresa has benefited from both private and public investment in 2019. The total public sector investment for the Santa Teresa industrial base was about $66 million, he said.
“We’ve got about $181 million in private sector investment, begun or completed in 2019,” Pacheco added. “Right now, we’ve got two buildings under construction. We’ve got Admiral Cable, which is a Taiwanese company. That building is under construction and should be operational by summer. They’ll have three buildings on their lot, and when they’re built out they’ll have about 342 employees. That’s in the Intermodal Park. In the Airport Park, we have Franklin Mountain Industrial. They’re doing a 143,000-square-foot building. Admiral Cable is about a $50 million investment; the spec building by Franklin Mountain is about $9.1 million.”
Stakeholders lobbied to get New Mexico Gas Company to install a second natural gas pipeline from Santa Teresa to San Jerónimo, Mexico, located just south of the international border.
“Right now, they have almost completed a 200,000-square-foot candy-producing plant,” Pacheco told Heinrich. “The more natural gas we can provide to the other side of the border, the more they can develop over there.”
Pacheco said the region’s achievements in 2019 were “unbelievable.”
“Even during this tumultuous period, we have these numbers,” he said. “If we had better staffing and a better-designed port of entry, my goodness …. There are only three ports ahead of us on the export list — and Otay Mesa (in California) is within our sights. We can get there, if we get some support.”
Henrich told the Sun-News he attributes much of the Santa Teresa port’s success to the attitude that people in the region bring to the set of challenges that may arise.
“But we also have the potential to continue to grow this port of entry,” Heinrich said. “It’s not constrained, physically, the way that others are along the border today. I think we need to continue to make the case that investments here will more than pay for themselves — in terms of overall economic activity, not just for southern New Mexico but for the entire nation.”
Marco Grajeda, executive director of the New Mexico Border Authority, believes partnerships between U.S. Customs and Border Patrol, the Office of Field Operations and industry have also been critical to the port’s growth.
“It’s an attractive area (in which) to grow, because we have Union Pacific, and a lot of these big companies that have recently relocated,” Grajeda said. “We have the space, we have logistics companies — all of that is really building on to the growth that we’re seeing. The people like Jerry Pacheco, who are out there marketing the region, the incentives that the state is offering — all of it comes into play.”
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Meanwhile, Grajeda said, the state remains committed to doing its part to make sure the infrastructure is there in order to continue that growth.
Heinrich said he believes the port saw such a successful year because more people are realizing that the port can be nimble enough to meet their needs.
“Because of this, we’ve been able to attract additional volume,” he said. “And the only thing holding us back is the infrastructure itself and the number of full-time employees. So we need to focus on those two issues.”
Not without its challenges
That Santa Teresa has been able to emerge as a key player in international trade defies the odds. The port faces a number of key challenges, including infrastructure; the port simply wasn’t built to handle the size or volume of loads that are now moving through it. Also, it is not designated as a hazmat port — meaning it cannot accommodate cargo that could be deemed “hazardous material.”
This could be something as innocuous as soft-drink syrup. Santa Teresa was recently passed up as a warehouse location by a company that manufactures automobile airbags, Pacheco noted, because the port lacks hazmat certification. Heinrich, who was aware of this development, acknowledged the absurdity of this — noting that airbags contain argon, a noble gas which, by definition, is nonreactive.
“We’ve lost deals because we didn’t have the hazmat capability,” Pacheco said.
Furthermore, the port — which only has three lanes for commercial traffic — is constantly working against its own infrastructure and design.
“When you look at Santa Teresa, it’s the only port that hasn’t been significantly upgraded or modernized,” Grajeda told the Sun-News. “It’s very close to El Paso, where you see three- or four-hour wait times. We could really be that relief route for a lot of those crossings, if we had the infrastructure. That’s one of the goals of my agency, and it’s something we take very seriously. We’re committed to working with all of these stakeholders to make sure that we’re not standing in our own way.”
The port is frequently used by TPI composites, which manufactures turbine blades. Moving the blades through the port presents a number of challenges, including navigating tight corners, low overhangs and oncoming traffic.
“We are currently producing blades for up-to-6.5 megawatt turbines,” said Victor Sáenz, vice president of Mexico operations for TPI. Next month, the company will begin production of 236-foot blades — its longest yet.
Some turbine blades can be as large as 300-feet long — roughly the length of a football field. While TPI is not currently producing those, the company’s capacity continues to grow to meet the demands of the expanding market.
“The private sector would love to see the port redesigned and retooled,” Pacheco told Heinrich. “Imagine what we could have done if we had a more efficient port, more personnel at the port — we could have probably done a lot better.”
Grajeda said that Santa Teresa is the only one of New Mexico’s three ports of entry that has not received a major upgrade — including Antelope Wells, which doesn’t see significant traffic.
Stakeholders told Heinrich additional infrastructure is needed to protect pedestrian traffic at the port, where conditions are currently dangerous. Heinrich suggested elevated pedestrian infrastructure as a possible solution.
“That would be much safer,” said Miriam Baca Kotkowski, of Omega Trucking, which utilizes the port daily.
Port Director Fernando Thome, of U.S. Customs and Border Protection, said the port also struggles with staffing levels. He is constantly shifting staff around throughout the day to meet the port’s specific needs of the moment.
“We do that constantly. For staffing, we have our challenges,” Thome said. But he immediately added that the port’s infrastructure and design was a more pressing need.
The port has also readjusted its staffing and hours to meet the transportation needs of industry, Thome said.
Sáenz said the company was willing to pitch in to help improve the port of entry, but TPI doesn’t want to be the only one.
“At TPI, we would like to see more corporations being willing to contribute to the (Donation Acceptance) program,” said Sáenz. That program allows private entities to donate to CBP — donations which, under federal statute, may be used for “port of entry construction, alteration, operation, or maintenance purposes, including land acquisition, design and the deployment of equipment and technologies.”
Manufacturing facility: Admiral Cable to open $50M facility in Santa Teresa, employing up to 342
This could help the port address its immediate infrastructure needs.
“As TPI, it is something that we are certainly willing to do,” he added. “But it would be nice to see (others who utilize the port) also participate in the program.”
“Ultimately, we need a modernized port of entry in order to continue that growth,” added Grajeda. “And we need to provide a safe atmosphere for pedestrians and privately owned vehicles.”
High volume, shorter waits
Kotkowski said companies like hers appreciate the short wait times at Santa Teresa — which might have no line while the Ysleta–Zaragoza in El Paso is experiencing a four-hour wait. She indicated that one of the port’s greatest assets is its ability to remain fluid and flexible to meet the needs of the moment.
“When I got there in January 2019, we were processing around 300 trucks (per day),” Thome said Wednesday. “Just yesterday, we processed 614 trucks. We’ve doubled our trucks while reducing our wait times by 83 percent.”
New Mexico is now leading all U.S. states in the percentage of export growth to both Mexico and the world.
Still, Thome said the port can go several hours without processing a truck. The port is currently engaged in outreach to companies in Ciudad Juárez to discuss the benefits of using the Santa Teresa port of entry.
“How do we maximize those downtimes? For me, it’s really selling the port. It means going south to talk to industry, and saying, ‘It’s here, and it’s open for business,’” Thome said. “We have to continue showcasing the port, the region, and the close-knit community and partnerships that we have.
Kotkowski said the Santa Teresa port of entry only has three commercial lanes.
“Zaragoza has eight. Cordova, in El Paso, has six,” she said. “And we are ‘the little port that could.’ And it’s because we are a really close-knit community — with the Border Industrial Association — it’s amazing.”
Heinrich believes it is critically important to maximize the nation’s port of entry infrastructure across the whole border.
“And if we have long wait times in other places — that’s not really ‘stealing business’ (from the nearby ports), it’s just creating efficiency,” Heinrich said.
Heinrich said that, while Congress has authorized additional CBP staff, those personnel are not being assigned to the Santa Teresa port. “And that’s one of my great frustrations,” he said. “We keep increasing toplines, and they don’t come to Santa Teresa.”
One thing stakeholders say could improve operations at the port is the regular reassessment of the workload-staffing model for the port.
“That hasn’t been done for a long time,” Grajeda said. “For example, we have hazmat cargo coming in — that’s more trucks. So we want to be able to (periodically) reassess — and (possibly bring more staff) into Santa Teresa.”
Opportunities lie ahead
The New Mexico Border Authority has requested state money for a hazmat containment site — the final component for making Santa Teresa a hazmat port of entry.
“We have received a commitment from state legislators to pitch in some (capital outlay) money for that project,” Grajeda said. “We were asking for $500,000, but we have about $300,000 right now. It’s a small investment, but it could make a really significant impact.”
Grajeda believes it could bring an additional 120 trucks per day to the Santa Teresa Port of Entry, “which is significant, since we’re seeing about 600 trucks a day right now,” he said. That would be a 20 percent increase in day-to-day operations.
“New businesses may want to relocate near a hazmat port, and we currently only have one hazmat port in the region.”
Kotkowski said the Santa Teresa port has become a way for travelers from Mexico to get to the west side of El Paso.
“Santa Teresa is very close to the valley, so they use that port of entry a lot,” she said. “If we could better accommodate them, it would be a game-changer. That’s what we try to visualize.”
