MELI Absorbs Half a Million sqm in 2025. Is It Already Mexico’s Largest Industrial Occupier?

Mercado Libre continues to expand in Mexico. So far this year, it has become the tenant that has absorbed the most industrial space, with nearly 450,000 square meters of industrial warehouses. With that, its total occupied area nationwide is around 1.5 million square meters, a figure that already places it practically at the level of General Motors, the largest industrial occupier in the country, according to SiiLA.

The scale is significant. In just the first nine months of the year, Mercado Libre absorbed four times more space than any other industrial tenant. And its accumulated footprint is, by a wide margin, twice that of any other occupier in Mexico—except General Motors.

This pace of expansion shows just how much Mexico has become a commercial platform capable of sustaining accelerated growth for large-scale, strong network-effect companies such as Amazon, Coppel, Liverpool, Mercado Libre, or Temu. When these companies ramp up their activity, their demand for inventory, distribution, and processing multiplies, forcing suppliers and logistics operators to expand capacity and increase the use of industrial space.

Academic and market evidence aligns with this phenomenon. Recent studies show that e-commerce growth largely depends on the logistical capacity—storage, distribution and operating network—that a country can sustain, and that the value of logistics associated with e-commerce in the region will exceed 6.28 billion dollars in 2025, driven by demand for inventory and distribution centers. Taken together, these analyses confirm that as digital platforms scale, so does the physical ecosystem that supports their operations.

In Mercado Libre’s case, the driver is consumption. In Mexico, the company maintains an average revenue growth rate of nearly 45% year-over-year, quarter after quarter, fueled by higher transaction volumes, increased financial operations, and a sustained increase in inventory and commercial activity. That internal expansion requires greater operating capacity, which makes the enlargement of its physical network inevitable and explains why it is one of the main demand drivers for industrial space in the country, with investment in property and equipment that by September had already reached 1.145 billion dollars—a 61% increase compared to the end of 2024.

This dynamism is exceptional, but not isolated. According to SiiLA Market Analytics, the consumer products sector—to which Mercado Libre belongs—is the one that has gained the most industrial space among the three most significant sectors in the country, with 9% growth between the third quarter of 2024 and the same period in 2025, compared with manufacturing (3%) and logistics (4%). In parallel, the digital commercialization of goods and services already accounts for nearly 6% of GDP, so the sector’s physical expansion is, in essence, the industrial materialization of its economic weight.

For more analysis on occupancy, inventory, and sector performance in the industrial market, visit SiiLA REsource or write to us at contacto@siila.com.mx.