Nearshoring to Mexico: A Logistics & Customs Guide

What nearshoring to Mexico involves

Nearshoring, in practice, means moving manufacturing, assembly, or sourcing closer to the US market by setting up or contracting operations in Mexico instead of Asia. For most companies that decision gets made at the executive level based on shipping time, tariffs, and labor cost. What happens after that decision is where things get concrete: registering a legal entity or a shelter arrangement, importing equipment and inputs, and setting up a supply chain that actually clears Mexican customs on schedule.

That second part, the logistics and customs side, is where we work. This guide covers the pieces that come up once a company has committed to Mexico and needs to execute: the IMMEX program, importing your first shipment, and who handles what.

The IMMEX program explained

IMMEX (Industria Manufacturera, Maquiladora y de Servicios de Exportación) is Mexico's program for manufacturing and export-oriented companies. Under IMMEX, a company can temporarily import machinery, equipment, and raw materials into Mexico without paying the general import tax, as long as the resulting product is exported within the program's time limits.

For a company nearshoring production, IMMEX is usually the difference between paying full import duties on every machine and input you bring into Mexico, or deferring that cost because the output leaves the country again. Getting registered requires a Mexican legal entity (your own, or a shelter company operating on your behalf), and the paperwork takes real lead time, so this is worth starting well before your first shipment is ready to move.

Shelter services are a common shortcut here: a shelter company holds the IMMEX registration and the compliance obligations, while you run the operational side. It's a faster path to importing than registering your own IMMEX program from scratch, and it's common for companies in their first year or two operating in Mexico.

Importing and customs once you've decided

Once your entity or shelter arrangement is in place, the practical sequence looks like this: classify your equipment and inputs under the correct tariff fractions, confirm which permits or Mexican product standards (NOMs) apply, and file the pedimento to bring each shipment through Mexican customs. If you're not on Mexico's importer registry yet, that's a separate blocker: see our importer of record service for how to import before your own registration is active.

Companies moving equipment for the first time tend to underestimate two things: how long tariff classification review takes for specialized machinery, and how much a missing NOM certificate can hold up a shipment at the border. Both are avoidable if they're reviewed before the shipment leaves origin, not after it arrives in Mexico.

Who handles the logistics

We split this into three services because most nearshoring operations need all three at different points:

• Moving the freight itself, machinery, inputs, or finished goods, across the border: see freight forwarding.
• Clearing that freight through Mexican customs with a licensed agent: see customs broker services.
• Importing before your own Mexican registration is active: see importer of record.

We run all three from our Querétaro headquarters, with operations in San Luis Potosí and Altamira, and we work remotely with companies anywhere in Mexico or shipping from abroad.