Q: What has been Puerto Carguero’s most important experience in the mining industry and how has it achieved success over the years?
ER: The market has changed a great deal in recent years. 2014 was very important in Sonora, as the expansion of the Cananea mine was a big investment for the state. At that time, the company experienced its greatest growth. Since then, the industry has undergone both legal and fiscal changes, which have had an impact on exploration and on the operators themselves. Our success in 2014 was due to our well-known reputation among suppliers, which allowed us to increase our customer base.
We are a versatile company and we adapt to the specific requirements of the client. Most of our clients are mining companies such as Grupo México, Peñoles, Fresnillo, and Peña Colorada. Globe Explore, Komatsu, Liebherr and Megamak are some of the suppliers we have worked with.  
JRR: It is important to point out that all the services offered by Puerto Carguero are focused on quality and not on price, which is what most of our clients are looking for, in addition to personalized attention.
Q: What impact does the current state of Mexican infrastructure and security have on Puerto Carguero’s operations?
ER: The state of the roads is good, with much of the work that began a few years ago now completed. Safety is a high cost for us but what has impacted us most is the price of fuel. On many occasions, we have had to assume fuel costs so that it would not impact our customers.
JRR: In the US, service prices fluctuate depending on the cost of fuel, but that does not happen in Mexico. I think we should start adopting this model. The state of the roads has improved a great deal, but highway tolls have also increased as a result of the construction of beltways in a good part of many cities. However, the main problem is the lack of road safety. This has led to insurance costs rising by as much as 25 percent. We are paying between 10 and 12 percent of the value of a truck each year in insurance, the price of which has increased since 2014. Those are very high costs.
Q: What is the company doing to mitigate the impact of these factors on your business?
ER: The use of technology has completely changed the way we do business. For example, the use of GPS has long since ceased to be optimal for us. We even have a specific person in charge of monitoring each and every unit, which also involves an additional cost.
JRR: We have also developed a marketing department because we want to diversify our activity. We are committed to the mining industry, but we are not seeing stable and sustainable growth in the sector at the moment. We want to open new markets in the industrial sector, in construction or energy, for example, because these are sectors where we would like to grow and where we see various areas of opportunity.
Q: What is Puerto Carguero’s main goal in the short term?
ER: The main objective is to boost our infrastructure, our units and our available equipment. We believe this is the best path to the diversification we are looking for as a company. We also want to have a greater presence on the border to open new markets in both Mexico and the US. The company is also diversifying the type of units it uses so we can offer our customers a more personalized service.