The picks-and-shovels trade on Mexican reshoring is the soft landing itself

Mexico attracted a record US$40,871 million in foreign direct investment in 2025, up 10.8% year over year, and a further US$34,968 million in the first half of 2026, the highest January-June figure on record, according to the Secretaria de Economia. Manufacturing absorbed 38.6% of the total. These are not soft numbers, and they are not a single-year headline. They represent a multi-year reallocation of global supply chains, and the market has largely converged on a single way to play it: build or finance the factories. When a trade becomes consensus, the returns tend to compress. The more interesting question is where the same tailwind can be captured with less capital and less competition.

Our answer is the soft-landing layer: the bundle of services a foreign company needs to actually establish itself, including site selection, permitting, energy and infrastructure connection, and the link to certified local suppliers. This is the picks-and-shovels trade on reshoring. During a gold rush, the reliable money is often made selling the picks, and in this case the picks are advisory, logistical, and relationship-based rather than industrial.

The financial profile is what makes it attractive. A soft-landing business is asset-light, which means it does not require the heavy capital expenditure of building industrial capacity. It generates recurring revenue built on long-term relationships, and its margins are driven by expertise and trust rather than by fixed assets. Return on invested capital in a well-run services business of this kind can substantially exceed what the underlying manufacturing generates, precisely because the capital base is so much smaller. You are capturing a fee on the growth without funding the growth.

There is a compounding dynamic worth naming. Every company that arrives needs the service once, but the relationship rarely ends there. A firm that trusts its landing partner tends to extend that relationship to new plants, new lines, and new projects, which turns a one-time engagement into an annuity. In financial terms, the customer acquisition cost is amortized across a lengthening revenue stream, and the lifetime value of each relationship rises accordingly.

The risks are real and worth stating plainly. A services business of this kind is only as good as its people and its relationships, which introduces key-person risk and makes talent retention a genuine strategic concern. It is also correlated to the FDI cycle: if reshoring slows, so does the pipeline of new arrivals. And the low barrier to entering the advisory business means the moat has to be built deliberately, through track record, regulatory fluency, and a supplier network that a new entrant cannot quickly replicate. Trust, in this business, is the moat, and trust is slow to build and easy to lose.

For a long-term owner, the appeal is a business that participates in the most powerful structural tailwind in the Mexican economy while carrying neither the capital intensity nor the operating risk of production. It is efficient capital positioned at the precise point where the country's growth becomes tangible, earning a recurring fee on a transition it does not have to finance.

At MountainStone we build and invest in opportunities like this one. If you operate in this space or are considering it, we would welcome the conversation.