The Aerospace Arizona Association led a delegation of aerospace industry and advocacy leaders on a 2 day mission to Tijuana. Several notable meetings with the Tijuana Mayor and his cabinet, the Tijuana Economic Development Council and local Mexico Shelter Companies provided unique insight into potential partnership opportunities between the two regions.

In particular, during a visit to one of the leading Shelter Company in Tijuana, Co-Production International (CPI), the Arizona delegation was able to witness the operation of a premiere Administrative Services provider.

CPI, in existence for over 40 years, facilitates the successful expansion of manufacturing companies in multiple high-tech industry sectors including aerospace and defense, electronics manufacturers, automotive and medical devices. Although the company is headquartered just across the border in San Diego, it handles the complete set-up of operations and manages the day-to-day administrative duties for their manufacturing partners through their facilities in Mexico. All these tasks are performed in full accordance with Mexican regulations allowing companies to control and focus entirely on manufacturing.

According to CPI, their shelter program allows the manufacturing company to set up in Mexico without all the legal and financial exposure, make all the decisions in regards to site selection, personnel, vendors and setup of the production facility while relying on CPI's guidance, existing infrastructure and Administrative team. This gives companies seeking to grow and expand, the ability to do so while only absorbing a fraction of the costs.

The visit included a tour of a brand new 300,000 square feet ICON operation. ICON Aircraft, located in Vacaville (Northern California) was seeking to insource composite fabrication to ensure that components met ICON's strict quality and cost standards. The facility in Tijuana will allow Icon to produce, using ICON tooling, processes, and quality standards, the volume and quality of composites needed to meet the significant demand for the A5 sport aircraft. Tijuana's proximity to San Diego will also reduce the time and cost to ship components to ICON's aircraft assembly facility.

The visit to the CPI shelter company and the preliminary ICON Aicraft operations did display some of the many commercial areas that boast a solid infrastructure, sufficient and reliable water and electric grid access." Says Moses Koyabe, VP of Business Development at Ideal Aerosmith. "Close proximity to San Diego provides a talented pool of bi-cultural and bi-lingual engineering and technical staff in a business-friendly environment.

Koyabe sees potential synergies with the Tijuana aerospace cluster which would revolve around the prospect for AZ companies to perform higher-level assembly/integration/services from Tijuana manufactured products before delivery to the end-user. This may include but is not limited to value-add testing, alignment, calibration, verification and other simulated testing that require very different set-ups and tools.

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Source: Aerospace Arizona, www.aredf.org