Doña Ana overtakes ABQ as export king
Intel’s steady decline cuts ABQ statistical area’s shipments by 40%
Doña Ana County has booted central New Mexico from its long-held status as the state’s No.1 export zone in 2016, thanks largely to declining activity at Intel Corp. in Rio Rancho.
Exports from the Albuquerque metropolitan area plummeted 43 percent last year, from $1.76 billion in 2015 to $1 billion in 2016, according to the U.S. Commerce Department’s latest report on exports from metropolitan areas around the country. In contrast, Doña Ana County’s exports declined by only $25 million last year, or 1.5 percent, to $1.57 billion, making it the state’s largest export zone for the first time.
Albuquerque’s fall from grace is not a reflection of export stagnation in the metro area, but rather it shows Intel’s apparently shrinking role in the local economy, said Randy Trask, manager of the Albuquerque Bernalillo County Trade Alliance. For years, Intel shipments from the Rio Rancho plant to sister facilities in other countries have had a disproportionate impact on export statistics for the Albuquerque area and the state as a whole, skewing trade trends as the global tech giant shifted its focus among different world regions where Intel operates.
But activity at the Rio Rancho plant has been in decline, and it’s pulling the Albuquerque area’s export totals down significantly.
“It’s a result of Intel and what it may or may not be exporting from year to year,” Trask said.
The Rio Rancho plant is producing old technology, since no new upgrades have been made there since 2009, and its fulltime workforce has dropped from 3,300 in 2013 to 1,200 as of last December.
Intel spokeswoman Liz Shipley said the company generally does not comment on exports from individual facilities.
But the Commerce Department reports a $508 million decline in exports of computer and electronic products from the Albuquerque area in 2016, particularly in shipments to Israel.
About 97 percent of New Mexico exports to Israel, where Intel has huge sister facilities, are com-
puter and electronic products. Exports to that country have fallen from $1.08 billion in 2015 to $508 million last year, and just $6.8 million in the first half of 2017.
Such immense annual shifts make it difficult to assess export trends in Albuquerque among businesses and industries separate from Intel, said Robert Queen, director of the Commerce Department’s New Mexico Export Assistance Center.
“The numbers we’re seeing in Albuquerque are difficult to analyze, because they’re skewed a lot by one big company,” Queen said.
In fact, exports by other firms and industries on the rise, Trask said. “The Intel factor obscures that.”
Doña Ana County’s export stability, meanwhile, largely reflects booming activity at the Santa Teresa industrial parks along the Mexican border, where some 60 companies operate, said Jerry Pacheco, executive director of the International Business Accelerator at Santa Teresa.
“Intel’s outsized impact on the Albuquerque (metropolitan statistical area) shows more work is needed to diversify the state’s export base,” Pacheco said. “We have to work harder to make sure we’re not so weighted in one area.”