In Aguascalientes, where seven out of every ten industrial square meters answer to the roar of the automobile, a factory for razors and sunscreens seems like an anomaly. The new 55,000-square-meter plant that Edgewell Personal Care has just opened in the FINSA Aguascalientes park, with a $110 million investment, reveals just how much even micro-sectors can alter the industrial map of a state built on wheels and engines.

With this transaction, Edgewell not only adds 1,300 jobs and a new production line for Schick, Banana Boat and Hawaiian Tropic in a park where more than 20 global companies coexist and generate roughly 5,000 direct jobs. It also expands its industrial footprint—which already includes a nearly 5,000-square-meter distribution center in Cuautitlán Izcalli—and, above all, breaks the inertia of a sector that had been losing traction over the past year.

According to the National Chamber of the Cosmetics Industry (CANIPEC), this year the personal products sector is expected to grow below the 6% achieved in 2024, when sales totaled 420 billion pesos (nearly $23 billion). In other words, although growth is expected, consumer momentum looks weakened by the recessionary economic climate, while investment is feeling the strain amid caution from local and foreign players.

That caution is also reflected in industrial parks. So far this year, apart from Edgewell’s investment, SiiLA has not recorded any significant transactions in the sector. In contrast, during the first nine months of 2024, at least two relevant deals were announced—one by Beiersdorf and another by Sánchez y Martín—totaling more than 23,000 square meters. The plant in FINSA Aguascalientes, therefore, not only adds capacity: it repositions the state as an anchor point for a sector that tends to scatter across the major hubs of the North and the Bajío.

Today, Aguascalientes accounts for 7% of Mexico’s personal care tenants. It may seem like a modest figure. However, in a market where this industry occupies just 1% of gross leasable area, compared to 65% controlled by the automotive sector, the data takes on a different dimension.

The contrast not only highlights the weight of the automotive cluster but also the paradox of a state where 90% of sectors—including personal care—vie to split just 15% of the remaining space, with average shares of 1%. In other words, although Aguascalientes is a highly concentrated market, its resilience comes from a constellation of micro-sectors that support strategic functions, from packaging and chemicals to personal care. And that specialization isn’t localist: 83% of what is produced in the state crosses the border into the United States, confirming that even the smallest sectors are embedded in the export logic that defines the region.

At bottom, Edgewell’s bet on Aguascalientes doesn’t upend the dominance of the automobile or reinvent Mexico’s industrial map. But it does show that, in the seams of a concentrated market, micro-sectors can reset balances, add resilience and project outward with the same export logic that sustains the giants. It’s in those margins where the diversity of Mexico’s economy is at play—and where a plant for razors and sunscreens can say as much as an auto assembly line.

At SiiLA, we track the stories that reshape markets. Explore the data on SiiLA Market Analytics, or write to us at contacto@siila.com.mx.