Vic Kolenc

El Paso Times

El Paso has climbed to be the 11th largest exporter of goods among 388 metro areas in the United States and would overtake the San Francisco area for 10th if exports from neighboring Santa Teresa were included in the federal rankings released last week.

El Paso last year exported $24.6 billion worth of goods to foreign countries — up 22.4 percent from 2014.

The Las Cruces area had $1.6 billion in exports in 2015 — up 18.5 percent from 2014. Most of those exports are through the Santa Teresa port of entry, located near El Paso's West Side.

El Paso's exports have grown a whopping 217 percent since 2009 when they stood at $7.75 billion, ranking 31st among the nation's metro areas, show newly released data from the Commerce Department's International Trade Administration.

"This means this area is a very competitive manufacturing and logistics region," said Robert Queen, director of the U.S. Commerce Department's Export Assistance Center in El Paso. "An enormous amount of material is coming into this region" through warehouses and from manufacturing plants, many of them making components shipped to Mexico assembly plants, he said.

El Paso is the leading exporter of goods to Mexico, taking that title from Detroit.

Almost 86 percent of El Paso's exports went to Mexico in 2015.

The El Paso area's goods exports grew while exports for the entire nation declined slightly in 2015, and 16 of the top 20 exporting metro areas recorded declines in goods exports in 2015, federal data show.

A report published Sept. 8 by the Brookings Institution, a Washington, D.C., public policy organization, attributed the national decrease to unfavorable money exchange rates and slowing global economic growth. Exports of transportation equipment and manufacturing equipment, which are large export sectors, declined in 2015, Brookings reported.

Just over half of El Paso's exports last year were computer and electronic products, and 12.3 percent were classified under a wide category: electrical equipment, appliances and components.

The exports are only one piece of El Paso's large trade pie. El Paso's international ports of entry also handle multiple billions of dollars of imports from Mexico and other countries.

"This speaks in a very positive manner (about) the whole borderplex region and our strategic location to Mexico," said Chuck Sholtis, CEO of his family's Plastic Molding Technology, or PMT. The East El Paso factory supplies millions of plastic parts annually to Mexico manufacturing plants in the automotive and other industries.

About 85 percent of PMT's plastic components are exported, mostly to assembly plants in Juárez and other areas of Mexico.

"Our business is growing incrementally," Sholtis said. That growth has come since 2010 as the global economy recovered from the Great Recession and auto parts manufacturers in Mexico increased their demand for plastic components as automotive sales grew, he said.

Many companies that moved manufacturing to China and other areas have been moving manufacturing back to North America, and that also has helped business increase, he said.

Another El Paso manufacturer, First Texas Products, which makes hobby metal detectors, portable security metal detectors and night vision goggles under several brand names, also has seen its exports grow in recent years, said Rick Cappiello, global director of security sales for the company.

One big growth area has been West Africa, where people and companies are using metal detectors to prospect for surface gold nuggets, he said.

First Texas employs about 300 people at its factory on Henry Brennan Drive in East El Paso, he said.

PMT added new equipment in the past several years to expand production at its factory on Rojas Drive, Sholtis said. It just completed a $250,000 renovation of its quality and testing lab, he said.

Greater investment in automation "has allowed us to grow without adding a lot of additional people," Sholtis said. PMT employs about 90 people.

Queen, the local trade official, said he doesn't see a lot of new companies moving into El Paso because of this area's growing trade, but he sees existing companies growing their trade-related business.

Thousands of jobs in manufacturing, logistics and other fields are tied to El Paso's trade industry, Queen said.

The Texas Workforce Commission estimated in July, the latest data available, that almost 32,000 people in El Paso County worked in manufacturing, warehousing and transportation industries, much of which would be jobs tied to this area's trade industry.

The International Trade Administration ties a huge number of jobs to exports business. It estimated in 2014 that 4,969 jobs were supported by each billion dollars of exported goods. Using that formula, the El Paso area, including Santa Teresa, would have an estimated 129,000 jobs supported by exports, or almost 39 percent of El Paso's employed workforce, estimated at 333,200 people in July by the Workforce Commission.

A labor shortage in Juárez could jeopardize future growth in El Paso's exports business, Queen speculated.

Some in the manufacturing industry in Juárez have estimated current manufacturing job vacancies as high as 25,000 and more, Queen said.

"Without people to process and complete the work, it could slow down materials" exported from the El Paso area, he said.

Executives with several companies operating manufacturing plants in Juárez said at a Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas conference in El Paso in October 2015 that Juárez factories were having problems finding and retaining workers.

More factories opening in Central Mexico coupled with workers moving away from Juárez and other areas of the U.S.-Mexico border during the Great Recession created a tight labor market in Juárez and other border areas, the executives reported.

Sholtis at PMT, said he's optimistic about future business prospects because of the production he sees at PMT's customers.

However, he said, some experts say auto production has peaked. If so, that could cause a "little easing of automotive production," he said. And that could affect component manufacturers and exports.

For more information, visit trade.gov/mas/ian/metroreport

Vic Kolenc may be reached at 546-6421; vkolenc@elpasotimes.com; @vickolenc on Twitter.

Top exporters

Value of goods exports from U.S. metro areas in 2015 and percentage change from 2014:

1. Houston: $97.1 billion, down 18 percent

2. New York: $95.6 billion, down 9 percent

3. Seattle: $67.2 billion, up 8.5 percent

4. Los Angeles: $61.8 billion, down 18 percent

5. Chicago: $44.8 billion, down 5 percent

6. Detroit: $44.3 billion, down 12 percent

7. Miami: $33.3 billion, down 12 percent

8. Dallas: $27.4 billion, down 5 percent

9. New Orleans: $27 billion, down 23 percent

10. San Francisco: $25.1 billion, down 7 percent

11. El Paso:* $24.6 billion, up 22.4 percent

12. Philadelphia: $24.2 billion, down 8 percent

13. Cincinnati: $24.1 billion, up 8.3 percent

14. Boston: $21.3 billion, down 9 percent

15. San Jose: $19.8 billion, down 6 percent

16. Minneapolis: $19.6 billion, down 7 percent

17. San Juan, Puerto Rico:** $19.3 billion, down 0.1 percent

18. Atlanta: $19.2 billion, down 4 percent

19. Portland: $18.8 billion, up 1 percent

20. San Diego: $17.4 billion, down 6 percent

*Does not include $1.6 billion from Santa Teresa area

** Puerto Rico is a U.S. territory

Source: U.S. International Trade Administration