Maxon Lift Corp. overcame a couple of hiccups en route to completing its second manufacturing plant in Monterrey, Mexico.

Maxon recently announced that construction has been completed on its new 422,000-square-foot factory and that the company has taken full possession of the building.

Anton Griessner, VP of marketing and business development at Maxon, added that it took Maxon approximately 11 months to complete construction.

The new facility brings Maxon in closer proximity to the company’s key markets, which is the most important benefit according to Griessner.

“This will allow us to ship quicker and be more cost-effective. Additionally, the plant reflects the ongoing improvement of manufacturing processes,” Griessner said. “For instance, the new plant will utilize an automotive-type flow assembly (with a conveyor). This will allow us to assemble key products in 7-10 minute intervals.”

Another benefit of the plant is the number of jobs it will create. According to Maxon, the plant will create over 2,000 new jobs in its initial phase. It will create over 4,000 jobs once fully expanded.

Maxon did face issues outside of the “standard” challenges during the construction process.

“The Maxon plant was additionally challenging due to COVID-19-triggered supply chain issues,” Griessner said. “At one point it looked as if construction steel would be unavailable for at least six months; then the first available electrical contractor had a lead time of over eight months, etc.”

Maxon built the first factory in Tijuana in 2007 and was able to pull lessons from that process 15 years later.

“Construction in Mexico is considerably different from construction in the U.S.,” Griessner said. “Having built the factory in Tijuana in 2007 and subsequently our galvanizing facility, we have learned how to navigate the process. This allowed this project to run relatively smoothly. The contractor did struggle to keep an appropriate staff on-site as there are more construction jobs out there as there are construction workers in Monterrey.”

Maxon currently has personnel working in the new building installing infrastructure and production lines. 

Maxon said that it is planning on producing the first liftgates in the new factory in January. Once the new factory is fully integrated with all the Maxon product lines, Maxon will have 800,000 square feet under the roof dedicated solely to the production of liftgates for North America.