Idaho firms tout trip to Mexico

Stephen Kaiser traveled to Mexico unsure if there would be demand for his company’s automated welding products.

He returned last week from a trade mission with Idaho Gov. C.L. “Butch” Otter with three specific projects to bid on and four potential distributors for the high-tech tools sold by his company, Advanced Manufacturing Engineering Technologies (AMET) Inc. of Rexburg.
“We were kind of hesitant to go,” said Kaiser, AMET Inc.’s international business development director. “We weren’t sure if Mexico would be able to support this kind of (machinery). That concern has been laid to rest.”
Representatives from 15 companies and organizations – from a potato products producer to a mining equipment manufacturer to an industrial contractor – accompanied Otter on the eight-day trade mission in an effort to establish cross-border relationships and to boost exports to Mexico.
State officials see tremendous room for growth in Idaho exports to Mexico, whose young population and growing middle class are expected to flourish in coming decades. Exports to Mexico from Idaho companies have swelled from $43.6 million in 1996 to $138.6 million in 2007, a 217 percent increase.
The trip is Otter’s third trade mission as governor, after trips to China and Cuba last year. Former Gov. Dirk Kempthorne led three trade missions to Mexico, while Otter went on three as lieutenant governor.
“The preliminary indications are it’s going to be a very successful mission,” said Jon Hanian, Gov. Otter’s spokesman. “We’re hoping to release a more detailed accounting.”
Initial conversations with some of the companies on the trip indicated some immediate sales results and plenty of relationship-building.
Boise-based PakSense, which sells labels to track the temperature of perishable products, initiated two immediate sales on the trip.
Gerd Uitdewilligen, the company’s international sales manager, said two companies, which he could not identify, asked for immediate orders of PakSense’s temperature-tracking labels.
Two other companies requested a batch of labels for initial testing, he said. Those labels were scheduled to ship by the end of last week.
Uitdewilligen met with a total of 15 potential customers, from grocery store chains to meat processors to companies that grow, ship and package produce.
“We were not there to hold babies,” he said. “The governor and his team were there to make things happen.”
David Howell, international sales manager at Preco Electronics Inc., a Boise company that sells collision avoidance systems for heavy equipment operators, went on his company’s first trade mission to Mexico and came away impressed with the access he had to major Mexican companies.
Howell met, for example, with the operations manager at Southern Copper, one of the largest copper mining companies in the world, and was invited back to review some of the company’s underground and open pit operations.
He also met with the engineering team at a Mexico City company that operates in one of Mexico’s largest ports, Manzanillo. Officials at that company also asked Howell to return to Mexico to visit their port operations in June and make a proposal.
“I was really impressed with what [state officials] were able to accomplish and pull off for us,” Howell said. “The door is open, and I have to carry it through now.”
A representative from Burley-based High Desert Milk, a cooperative that plans to open a powdered milk plant this summer, came home with a number of contacts that could be important when the plant begins operations in July or August, said general manager Karl Nelson.
Stephen Kaiser, of AMET, said his company will be providing quotes for three companies: one that builds windmills; another that helps in the construction of oil and gas pipelines for PEMEX, the state-owned petroleum company; and a third that manufactures air compressor tanks.
All those companies now rely on manual welding, which slows production and is less reliable, he said. Kaiser said he predicts a lot of demand in coming years for automated welding in Mexico as companies look for competitive advantages.
“Each one of them needs a solution for them to improve their position and their market,” Kaiser said. “It’s always a long-term process (to make a sale), but the excitement the customer was showing, that kind of excitement usually ends up resulting in something positive.”