Insights · Industrial parks
Biotek · Cuadritos, Mexico’s first green industrial park
An industrial park with available buildings but unreliable power does not keep tenants. In Celaya, between 2012 and 2015, the group built a park designed around its own generation. This is the story and what it teaches parks today.
Originally published on · Updated on
Power, an industrial park’s weak point
New plants arriving in Mexico’s industrial parks put power at the center: a manufacturing tenant needs capacity available on time and a continuous supply. Every outage means stopped production, scrap and contracts at risk. A park that cannot guarantee power competes on rent alone.
The project: Cuadritos and Biotek Power
For Grupo Industrial Cuadritos and Biotek Power, the group handled design, supply, construction, installation and start-up of the park’s cogeneration plant in Celaya, Guanajuato. The project was developed between 2012 and 2015 and is Mexico’s first Green and Sustainable Industrial Park.
- 4.8 MW of cogeneration with lean-burn GE Jenbacher engines.
- Aprovis recovery boilers producing 4 tonnes of steam at 7 bar for the process.
- A dedicated gas pipeline from PEMEX.
- Project investment: USD 11 M, under design and construction (EPC).
The full profile is in Biotek · Cuadritos Industrial Park.
Why a park with its own power wins
A park that generates its own power stops being a set of buildings and becomes a private grid with its own generation. The advantages are concrete:
- Continuity: on-site generation keeps tenants running when the external grid fails.
- Stable cost for tenants: the park can offer power at a predictable cost, a leasing argument few have.
- Useful heat: with cogeneration, buildings that need it receive steam or hot water as well as electricity.
- Self-paced growth: capacity grows on site, in phases, without waiting for substation expansions.
- Environmental metrics: clean on-site generation helps meet what global tenants require.
The model that is replicated today
Today, GIS Power’s signature is solar with storage (BESS) as primary power. Solar does not generate at night, and a park needs firm power around the clock: storage shifts solar energy to the hours without sun, and the grid or gas-fired generation stays as backup. Where tenants use steam or hot water, cogeneration adds that heat, as at Cuadritos.
Mexico’s Electricity Sector Law (Official Gazette, March 18, 2025) offers two routes for self-supply: grid-connected, at 0.7 MW or more, with a possible simplified procedure between 0.7 and 20 MW (art. 30), or isolated, with no grid connection and all consumption within a private network (art. 31). If an intermittent plant exports to the grid, it must have its own storage backup or pay for it (art. 32).
More in industrial parks, private grids and islanded microgrids.
When it is not a fit
- A park with few tenants or a demand not yet known: grow in phases.
- No tenant uses heat: cogeneration is not justified, and solar with storage plus backup is enough.
Sources
- Group project history: Biotek Power · Cuadritos Industrial Park (PMI International and GIS Power company profiles).
- Electricity Sector Law, Official Gazette (DOF), March 18, 2025, arts. 30, 31 and 32.
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