Phillips opens its latest expansion in Mexico
The company's new 500,000-square-foot facility in Arteaga, Mexico, will produce Phillips Industries and Phillips Connect products for its North American customers.
Phillips has officially opened its new expanded site in Arteaga, Mexico. The reconfigured and newly constructed buildings on the Phillips campus will produce products for Phillips Industries and Phillips Connect customers in North America.
Phillips first came to Mexico for the production of wiring harnesses back in 2007 and moved to a larger location in Arteaga in 2015 to meet the growing demands of its OEM customers. The new building in Arteaga, completed in 2022 and totalling 380,000 square feet, will now house all Phillips Industries manufacturing operations, including those already in Mexico, and all production lines relocated from their former location in Santa Fe Springs, California.
The company's headquarters will remain in California and serve as the base for customer service, accounting, R&D, and other support functions.
Phillips says in a press release that it has taken advantage of this move to upgrade equipment, including three new high-speed wire and cable extruders, 36 new injection molding machines, and various other applicators to prepare the factory for increased production capacity.
The original Arteaga building, with 120,000 square feet of floor space, has been reconfigured to manufacture, test, and ship electronic telematics products for the Phillips Connect business. Phillips Connect is in the process of relocating its manufacturing from China and near-shoring its product assembly to ensure lower cost, fewer supply chain constrictions, better control of quality, and quicker delivery to its North American customers.
The new Phillips Connect facility includes an ESD SAFE room featuring 21,000 square feet of controlled ambient environment that meets the ANSI ESD 20/20 standards for electronic assembly. Production capabilities of the new facility include in-circuit device programming, automatic fully automated glue dispensing, and assembly using S-Y and 6-axis robots, automated torque drivers, leak detection systems up to IP69K, along with functional testing, and customer acceptance testing.
“Our experience in Mexico has proven to me that it’s the absolute best place to manufacture Phillips and Phillips Connect products,” says Rob Phillips, CEO and president of Phillips Industries and Phillips Connect in the press release. “The facility is the cleanest, most well-organized, and the best managed we have anywhere in the world. Most importantly, the people are outstanding. Our current workforce and those ready to come to work for us can be relied upon to carry our success forward. We depend on that as we continue to expand here in Mexico.”
By the end of 2023, Phillips expects to employ 2,100 people in Arteaga.
