PROFormance purchases Mexico manufacturer

On Oct. 23, automotive engine remanufacturer PROFormance Technologies, which does business as PROFormance Powertrain Products, completed a purchase of Automotive Remanufacturers de Mexico, a similar company based in Aguascalientes, Mexico.

PROFormance was a business segment of Aaron’s Automotive – itself a division of Fort Worth, Texas-based Aftermarket Technology Corp. – until a group of investors led by Clint Georg purchased PROFormance in July 2006. The company operates a 240,000-square-floot manufacturing facility at 2720 N. Airport Commerce Ave., just east of Springfield-Branson National Airport.

Georg, now PROFormance’s president and CEO, said purchasing the Mexican manufacturer helps his company achieve growth goals.

“The company in Mexico produces certain configurations of engines that we don’t currently produce in Springfield,” Georg said, while in Mexico. “It would take us months or years (in Springfield) to develop some of the products down here.”

Georg would not disclose the price of the purchase or the number of employees at either the Mexico or Springfield facilities, though he did say the Springfield plant is larger and employment has grown 15 percent during the last three years.

The Mexico factory will send product to the United States to be distributed from the company’s Springfield facility.

The new factory also will act as a distribution point for engines produced in Springfield.

“There are more than 60 million automobiles in Mexico, and it’s an underserved market for remanufactured automobile engines,” Georg said.

“We feel that this business offers a lot of strengths.”

Marty Callison, general manager of fellow Springfield automotive parts remanufacturer SRC Automotive, said he doesn’t anticipate his company looking into Mexico.

“I do know it’s more of a repair market than a remanufactured engine market,” Callison said. “The economy almost dictates that. They do whatever they can to repair an engine rather than pull it out and replace it.”

Callison added that SRC Automotive doesn’t do direct business with PROFormance; SRC is an original equipment manufacturer, while PROFormance builds for the automotive aftermarket.

Expansion strategies

The Mexican company will do business as PROFormance Powertrain Products Mexico, Georg said, in an effort to sustain brand unanimity – a method other companies have followed in the past.

Electronic component manufacturer Positronic Industries has subsidiaries in Puerto Rico, Europe and Asia. CEO John Gentry said his company sets up offices in other countries, with the Positronic name whenever possible, in an effort to penetrate those markets.

“We realized years ago that if we wanted to penetrate other parts of the world, we needed to set up physical locations there,” he said, noting that the first overseas presence was in Europe in the early 1980s.

“We realized we can’t produce product in one part of the world and try to take care of customer needs in another part of the world,” Gentry added.

He also said that the idea of going overseas to sell to foreign customers is different from the method of most manufacturers, which open overseas facilities to access cheaper labor and ship products back to the United States.[[In-content Ad]]