Mexican customs are complicated—and perhaps, such is to be expected when dealing with the 12th largest economy in the world. Just in 2024, the country received over $625 bn worth of goods while sending an additional $617 bn abroad, bringing total trade to well over $1.2T. 

Not to mention that trade with Mexico is growing at an accelerated pace, as countries around the world seek to relocate their supply chains in  a process commonly known as nearshoring. Just between 2023 and 2024, total trade grew by 4.2%, and will likely continue to grow in years to come.

Given the importance of Mexico in international commerce, in this article, we decided to look more closely at one of the key elements in the country’s trade process. Namely, the structure of Mexican customs. More specifically, we looked at which customs points in Mexico are the most important, how they've changed over time and, crucially for operators, when they tend to be at their busiest.

To start, we should note that Mexico has 85 different customs points across the country—that is, places in which foreign cargo can enter the country for revision or domestic cargo can be sent abroad. Of these, 21 are located along the US-Mexico border, 17 at maritime ports, and an additional 12 were in Mexico’s interior—mostly in the form of airports.

The distribution of these customs facilities, however, changes drastically when considering the volumes each handles in a year. Take, for instance, 2023—the latest year for which the Mexican government has released data—. During that year, as shown in the figure below, border customs handled almost 70% of the total customs traffic in Mexico, despite the fact that only 42% of customs facilities are located at the border. These were followed by interior customs points, with 19.1% of all operations and maritime with 11%—a considerable shift since maritime customs points are actually the second most common in Mexico but the third in terms of use.

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In the figure below, we went further and mapped each of Mexico’s 85 customs points. The size of each circle represents the volume of operations handled in the year 2023. Again, there is great prominence on the US-Mexico border. In fact, the four largest customs points by volume were all located along the border: Nuevo Laredo, Tijuana, Ciudad Juarez, and Reynosa. You can hoover over each dot to see the name of each customs point and their volumes.

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Over the years, customs operations have grown considerably in Mexico. This, of course, is a result of the booming trade relationship with the US and the growing interest in Mexico across the global economy which has drastically increased the nation’s trade volumes. In the figure below, we show the number of operations every month at all Mexican customs facilities between 2012 and 2023. As the graph shows, there is a strong upwards trend with a series of cyclical downturns which we will explore later in this article. In fact, over the last decade, monthly operations at Mexican customs have grown 56.6%.

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But again, these trends are not evenly distributed across all customs points. In the figure below, we break down monthly operations by the type of customs point, be them at the US-Mexico border, in the Mexican interior or at a port. As the figure shows—and one would expect from the distribution of operations—border customs points are leading the way, followed by interior border points and maritime locations. Crucially, border customs points are growing at a much faster rate than their counterparts. While interior customs operations grew by 70.3% over the examined period, and maritime operations grew by 45.4%, border operations grew by 120.4%. Again, a signal of the prominence of US-Mexico trade.

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Now, given that we have data for every customs point in Mexico over the last eleven years, this allows us to provide an initial analysis of imports and exports cycles. That is, taking the average of monthly operations over the last decade to see any patterns in activity. We did just that in the figure below, creating a simple prediction of the busiest months of the year. As the graph shows, we found that, on average, Mexican customs have two main peaks in activity. First, an early peak in March, likely ahead of Easter and the summer holidays. Then, a second peak in October, again, likely ahead of the winter holidays. There is a third, albeit smaller peak in August that could be related with the celebration of Mexico’s independence—the country’s largest holiday—in the month of September.

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Again, we wanted to see if these trends in operating volume held across different types of customs facilities. Thus, in the figure below, we broke down operations by border, interior, and maritime costumes points. Interestingly, we saw that the peaks in operations were pretty homogeneous, even if their steepness varied across types. All border types had peaks in March and October. However, these were far more pronounced for US border points than the other two subcategories.

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Finally, we wanted to see how individual customs points have changed in prominence over the years. To do so, we calculated the rank of each customs point in terms of yearly volume of operations for the 11 years for which data is available. We then plotted the rank for the most used customs points below.

As the figure shows, the four busiest border points have remained relatively steady over the last decade. The entire table suggests a great degree of stability across customs points with one noticeable exception. In the period examined, the port of Manzanillo went from being the 12th most important port in terms of operations to being the sixth most prominent.

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The information above suggests that Mexican customs are indeed complex, but they are not unruly. Using the right data, we can derive conclusions about their distribution and the busiest months for importing or exporting goods to Mexico.

Here in Desteia, we believe companies should have access to how data like this impacts their own operations. If you’d like to see how our tool could help make your customs operations more efficient, make sure to schedule a call with our team: