Product Offering, Mining Needs Align to Boost Mexico Attraction

Q: What have been the company’s greatest achievements in the mining industry over the last year?
A: Belden offers a structure of integral communication for industrial processes and in the last 12 months, we have positioned ourselves among the main mining groups, although we still have a long way to go. Grupo Peñoles is a client and we have positioned ourselves with Grupo México. In addition, we are in contact with the main directors of mining projects in Mexico. Between 2017 and 2018, our market in the country grew by 12 percent.
Q: What factors led Belden to make mining a key sector for its growth in Mexico?
A: The first factor was the growth of the sector and projections for the medium term. The second factor was the alignment of the products offered by Belden and the needs of the mining sector in Latin America. We offer the data transmission speeds needed to obtain a positive response in case of failure. The industry needs to be able to trust a product and we offer 99.99 percent reliability. Another factor that helped decide our bet on Mexico is the country’s need for cybersecurity, which our portfolio addresses. Many solutions offer perimeter network security to stave off hackers. Belden not only addresses the external security of a server but also the PLC level, which is the brain of the robot. On average, there are nine attacks per day on each industrial network.
Q: Mexico is a traditionally conservative country when it comes to implementing changes. How does Belden get past this?
A: About 10 years ago, the internet was consolidated in Mexico as an accessible technology for everyone. Mexican society became more open to the possibilities of change, especially because it had the advantage of studying the trends in other more technologically-developed territories. I think that at a professional and industrial level, Mexico is more open to change than before. One advantage Belden has is that all our solutions are modular, which allows the user to start small and move forward as required. This generates a great deal of trust among our customers.
Q: How does Belden ensure that the end user experiences 100 percent of the possibilities presented by its products?
A: We have a global virtual training platform for commercial engineers called Belden University. This training extends to the sales engineers at our distributors in each country. In Latin America, there is also an initiative called the Industrial Training Program 2019, an online program of 40 minutes per week for our commercial teams that explains the technology related to each product and how it can be sold. To this we must add two other initiatives. The first is the so-called business cluster: periodic meetings in which representatives of Belden, the distributor and the end user interact to provide the best possible solution. The other initiative is multiple certifications based on international standards that Belden offers its users, whether distributors, integrators or end users.
Q: What impact do you expect the new administration to have on the development of mining in Mexico?
A: The impact from the new administration cannot yet be measured because the rules have not yet been clearly defined. What we do believe is that it will affect direct investment, since there will be less FDI in certain sectors. But the sector is also projecting growth so I believe that mining will not be affected by the change of government. In this context, the mining sector continues to be key for Belden in Mexico.
Q: What is Belden’s most successful product in Mexico in the last 12 months?
A: Our armored cable, in all its variations, has been a great success. It comes with a 10-year warranty, while the competition offers a maximum of two years on similar products. Wireless switches have also been a very successful product, since a good part of mining operations takes place in remote areas that lack internet. Our industrial switch, named Owl, converts the Wi-Fi or Ethernet signal into 4G, which allows it to operate without problems in remote locations.