The facility, located northwest of Mexico City, will tackle production as well as component manufacturing for its mining division product line and complete mining machine builds.
It will expand to 60,000ft2 (5,600m2) through phase 1. The phase scheduled for this year includes the addition of assembly bays, weld bays, a burn table and overhead cranes.
The facility currently employs 30 workers in MacLean's sales and marketing, skilled trades, technical and training support departments, along with virtual reality and vehicle monitoring system programmers.
Kevin MacLean, president of MacLean Engineering, said that the company hopes the expansion will be seen for what it is: "[It is] a proof point for the extent to which we see the Latin American underground mining market as key to our company's future and a significant investment in de-bottlenecking our three manufacturing facilities in Ontario."
Tony Caron, vice president of Latin America and Quebec, added: "We have fleets of MacLean equipment supporting safer, more productive underground operations at mine sites across Mexico, Peru, the Dominican Republic, Guatemala, Colombia and Ecuador, so I'm thrilled that this addition of capacity at our Querétaro facility will place us closer to our Latin American customers.
"This investment by MacLean will also help address production output limitations out of our existing manufacturing footprint in Ontario at our Collingwood, Owen Sound and Barrie facilities."
MacLean first opened a branch in Mexico seven years ago. The new facility will be its first manufacturing facility outside of its main base in southern Ontario and will make MacLean the only global OEM in Mexico conducting manufacturing activities in-country.
The MacLean product suite includes platform and utility bolters, shotcrete sprayers and transmixers in the ground support category; remote operated blockholer drills, mobile rock breakers and water cannons in the ore flow/secondary reduction category; and scissor lifts, boom lifts, boom trucks, ANFO/emulsion chargers, personnel carriers, fuel/lube trucks, cassette trucks, fan and pipe handlers and service drills in the utility vehicles and attachments category in several mining sectors.
