National content: the opportunity Mexico is letting slip

Bajío Ventures · September 2026 · CFE’s plan, read from the Bajío, 3 of 3

CFE’s 2025–2030 Strengthening and Expansion Plan promises “greater national content” and “regional supply and employment.” The figures CFE presented at EnerBaja 2026 show what that means in equipment to be bought:

Equipment	Implied volume 2024–2030
Power transformation	~22,800 MVA
Distribution transformation	~5,900 MVA
Reactive compensation	~13,600 MVAr
Conductor (transmission and distribution)	~54,500 circuit-km
New and expanded substations	~270
Distribution works	~49,300

Our own order-of-magnitude estimate, based on CFE’s slides.

It is the largest demand for electrical equipment in years. The question asked at EnerBaja was blunt: why isn’t local production ready?

The targets exist; the capacity doesn’t yet

In May 2025, CFE and CANAME (the National Chamber of Electrical Manufacturers) launched an outreach effort with 56 Mexican manufacturers and set national content targets for 2030: from 25% to 35% in generation, from 30% to 60% in transmission and from 25% to 50% in distribution. CANAME’s own magazine repeated those targets in 2026.

The answer to the EnerBaja question is not simple. Manufacturing for CFE requires meeting its specifications, passing testing and qualification at LAPEM, having installed capacity and, above all, order certainty to justify the investment. None of that is solved in months. Meanwhile, purchases are covered by imports and national content stays a talking point.

The queue is global

The pressure is twofold. According to Wood Mackenzie, power transformer lead times went from about 50 weeks in 2021 to 120 weeks in 2024, and for 2025 it estimated a 30% supply deficit in power transformers in the United States, our main competitor for the same equipment. A country with its own manufacturing and testing capacity executes faster. One without it depends on international queues, and those queues already squeeze the 2027 margin.

What is needed

• Supplier development, with a gap assessment against CFE specifications and a qualification path at LAPEM.
• Supply-chain coordination, which is CANAME’s natural role: it brings together manufacturers of transformers, conductors and substation equipment.
• Order-backed financing, so manufacturers can invest in capacity with demand secured.
• Regional consortia. The Bajío concentrates electrical and automotive manufacturing with transferable capabilities, as we saw in the electromobility supply chain.

The window is short. Most of the plan’s investment is spent between 2026 and 2028. Every year the local chain is not ready is a year of purchases that go abroad and do not come back.

In this series: 1. The bottleneck is the grid · 2. 2027: the year the power system will be tightest · 3. National content

Sources: CFE, 2025–2030 Strengthening and Expansion Plan, EnerBaja 2026 presentation · Expansión, CFE pushes for more national content, Jul 2025 · Revista CANAME, the 2025–2030 Plan and national content, Mar 2026 · Wood Mackenzie, power transformer lead times · Wood Mackenzie, 2025 transformer deficits · LAPEM · CANAME

Bajío Ventures — a Mexican energy-infrastructure investment group based in Guanajuato: capital, a data platform on the region’s industrial base, and a German industrial channel, with its own advisory presence in Berlin.