Mexico's electric port cranes need contracts that say who pays when the power drops

A few minutes without power can cost a container terminal several hours. That's how José Antonio Contreras, CEO of Contecon Manzanillo, described the restart problem in September, when DataPortuaria reported that his terminal had added two electric ship-to-shore cranes and five more pieces of yard equipment while it was still dealing with limits on its electricity supply.

That detail anchors a Nov. 9 analysis in Mexico Business News by Romina Miranda, who argues that electrifying Mexico's terminals creates a contracting problem alongside the engineering one. When a crane stops, the loss can land on the terminal operator, on the equipment supplier, on the customer whose containers are waiting, or on nobody at all if the grid failed. Her advice is to settle it in the contract and to start before the purchase order is signed, because permits and power supply decide whether the new equipment can run.

The electric equipment arriving on Mexican quays

The spending is real and recent. In April, Hutchison Ports TIMSA brought two electric mobile cranes into service in Manzanillo, each able to lift up to 100 tons. In March, APM Terminals opened Phase II of its Lázaro Cárdenas container terminal, which now covers 65 hectares and can handle up to 2 million TEUs. The company also started construction on Phase III, which adds 450 meters of berth for a total quay length of 1,200 meters.

APM Terminals' own announcement makes the energy link explicit. Leo Huisman, regional managing director for the Americas, described plans for a fully electric fleet of mobile equipment in the medium term, electrical infrastructure built for automated operations, and an aim to run the terminal on renewable sources. Beatriz Yera, managing director of APM Terminals Mexico, said Lázaro Cárdenas is currently the only terminal in Latin America with a fully automated container yard.

Taken together, these purchases suggest that a growing share of Mexico's container handling depends on a stable electrical connection. A diesel machine carries its own fuel. An electric crane is only as reliable as the supply behind it, and Miranda points out that the terminal's promised service times now depend on electrical installations, maintenance and operating conditions as much as on the crane.

Grid, wiring or machine: three reasons a crane stops

Miranda's central recommendation is a sorting rule. A contract should separate three causes of a stoppage: a failure on the electricity grid, a problem with the terminal's internal installations, and a defect in the equipment that was purchased. Within those causes, the question is whether the loss came from a manufacturing defect, a bad installation, skipped maintenance or circumstances outside anyone's control.

Each party already has a natural lane. The port operator runs cargo handling and owes the agreed service conditions. The technology supplier answers for specifications, warranties and installation commitments. Customers have to provide accurate cargo information and follow the conditions that govern their operations. Articles 55 and 56 of Mexico's Ports Law set out responsibilities tied to concession titles and operating contracts. Miranda notes that those articles do not make every commercial loss automatically joint and several among all participants. Liability follows the agreements, the legal obligations and the evidence.

Contreras's restart point is what turns this from paperwork into operations. If a brief interruption takes hours to recover from, most of the delay comes after the power is back. At an electric terminal, the outage sets off the loss, but the restart decides how big it gets, and nobody can negotiate that after the fact.

There is a fair objection. Miranda is careful to say that the published information does not show any contractual claims arising from Contecon's supply limits, so this is a prevention argument, not a pattern of disputes. Even so, the cost of prevention is small. It mostly means drafting clauses that a terminal and its suppliers would want to agree on anyway.

Permits and paying for a bigger grid connection

The second risk comes earlier in the project: buying equipment before confirming that it can legally and physically operate. A modernization can involve construction inside the port, new electrical installations or more supply capacity, and each comes with its own requirements. The Ports Law governs concessions, permits and contracts for building and operating port facilities. The Electricity Sector Law, published in March 2025, and its Regulation govern electricity activities and connection procedures. Miranda adds that an electric crane does not automatically trigger an electricity generation permit. It depends on the works and activities involved.

The Regulation, published in the Diario Oficial, includes terms a terminal's procurement team will meet if it asks for more capacity. An applicant requesting connection of a load center can be asked to fund "specific works", the facilities that run from its site to the connection point identified in studies by the distributor or CENACE, the grid operator. Where regulated tariffs do not recover the cost of building those works, the applicant may have to make a contribution in cash or in kind. The Regulation defines high voltage as anything above 35 kilovolts.

BNamericas reported on Nov. 11 that the Federal Electricity Commission (CFE) plans to spend 71,000 million pesos, about US$3.8 billion, next year to expand generation and transmission capacity. Gartner, in research highlighted by Supply Chain Management Review on Nov. 6, expects grid congestion, electrification and data-center demand to make energy availability a deciding factor in manufacturers' site selection, network design and automation investments through 2029. Gartner was writing about manufacturers, not ports. Still, the same logic applies to any operator whose automation depends on a grid connection. This is why Miranda wants contracts to name who obtains each authorization and who absorbs the cost of permitting delays.

Contract terms and the outage records

Miranda's checklist is specific enough to bring straight into a procurement review. For equipment contracts, she lists the terms that decide whether a warranty can be enforced at all:

• Equipment acceptance procedures and performance testing
• Repair response times
• Spare parts availability
• Conditions under which warranties can be enforced
• The party responsible for each authorization, and who bears the cost of delays in obtaining it

The evidence file matters just as much. To trace a loss to its cause, a terminal needs its contracts, technical specifications, authorizations, maintenance records and equipment performance reports. It should also log each power interruption, how long cargo handling was suspended, what customers were told, and what was done to restore service. NOM-001-SEDE-2012, the standard for electrical installations, is listed as current in the Ministry of Economy's standardization system. Compliance with it should be checked alongside the project's other technical and regulatory requirements.

Insurance gets the same scrutiny. Miranda advises reviewing coverage, liability limits and the process for proving interruption losses, without assuming every loss will be covered. For a CFO approving a crane purchase, that review belongs in the same approval packet as the purchase order.

Next milestones at Lázaro Cárdenas and Manzanillo

Phase III at Lázaro Cárdenas will bring new ship-to-shore cranes sized for the world's largest container ships and more automated equipment, which could mean new acceptance tests, warranties and service commitments. In Manzanillo, Contreras said Contecon is working with the National Port System Administration of Manzanillo and CFE to expand supply capacity.

That Manzanillo expansion is the signal to watch. More capacity would reduce how often grid failures cause stoppages, but it would not affect the risks from internal installations or equipment defects, and those depend entirely on what the contracts say. For shipping lines and cargo owners moving freight through either port, the terminal service agreement is where those three risks end up, so they should read it before the next outage rather than after.