Maquiladora industry lost US$50 million due to power outage in Juarez

CIUDAD JUAREZ – The massive blackout that paralyzed Ciudad Juarez caused losses to the maquiladora industry of approximately US$50 million.

Jesús Manuel Salayandía Lara, president of the National Chamber of the Transformation Industry (Canacintra), said that for at least two hours the 330 maquilas in the area stopped work due to the lack of energy, which caused economic damages ranging from US$150,000 per plant to US$300,000 in other cases.

The outages caused downtime problems and delays in production; even damage to the machinery used in their processes.

It is worth mentioning that power supply failures have an impact on companies and the arrival of possible investments, since not all plants are prepared for them.

“It creates a lot of uncertainty if sufficient electricity is not guaranteed. It can have an impact on the Foreign Direct Investment, all of this is the basis for a new company to decide between Juarez or another place, for this reason, it is important to guarantee everything that has to do with the electricity issue”, he commented.

The CFE detailed that there was a collapse of the National Interconnected System (SIN) and consequently a total blackout in the Juarez Zone of the Northern Division, affecting 525 megawatts of demand and 484,936 users in the state of Chihuahua.

Source: Diario.mx