A bottling plant near Monterrey carrying about MXN 42 million a year in electricity cost had already paid for a full energy audit and implemented only a fraction of it. Twelve months of monthly energy governance, rather than a second study, cut its electricity per unit produced by about 13%. Those are Mexico Energy Partners engagement figures and the basis for each one is set out below. The decision this puts to a plant director is narrow. Does the next budget line buy another diagnostic, or buy the process that gets the last one executed?
The timing matters for food and beverage sites in particular. CFE raised industrial electricity tariffs by about 12% for 2025, with GDMTH, DIST and DIT the classes most affected, as Energía Hoy reported on 16 January 2025. A plant that holds consumption flat in a year like that watches its invoice rise. A consumption intensity gain of the size described here roughly offsets a tariff move of the size Mexican industry saw.
The starting position
The site runs compressors, chillers, bottling lines, cold rooms and packaging equipment across multiple shifts, supplying soft drinks and flavored waters across northern Mexico. Load swings with season and with marketing promotions, which is why any intensity measure at a plant like this has to be normalized on production rather than read straight off the meter.
Three conditions defined the problem at the start of the engagement. Annual electricity cost sat at around MXN 42 million. Visibility inside the fence line stopped at the total CFE bill, so no one could say which system carried which share. And a backlog of efficiency ideas existed with no owners, no dates and no follow up, which is the state most audits leave a plant in.
That last point is the finding. The constraint here was not identification. The plant already knew a great deal about its own inefficiency. It had no mechanism for converting that knowledge into completed work.
What the service actually does
Mexico Energy Partners built a consumption baseline from CFE bills, production records and the submeters already installed, then agreed a short set of indicators with the plant team. Those were kWh per liter bottled, billed peak demand and compressor efficiency. A short list beats a long one because a short list gets read.
Reporting ran on a fixed cadence, with weekly or biweekly summaries and a monthly performance report. The mechanism that carries the work is the recurring Energy Coach session with operations, maintenance and finance in the same room. They review one pipeline register. Every measure in it has an owner, an expected investment, an estimated kWh and peso saving, a simple payback and a status. Items that do not move carry forward with the same owner and a new date, which is what makes stalling visible.
What the first quarter turned up
Three findings came out of the first quarter, and none of them required capital. Compressed air leaks and pressure setpoints above what the lines needed were making compressors work harder than the process required. Refrigeration setpoints sat lower than product quality demanded. Conveyors and packaging systems kept running through breaks and cleaning periods.
The compressed air finding is the most common one in this sector and the best documented. The US Department of Energy sourcebook Improving Compressed Air System Performance carries a fact sheet on system leaks, dated April 1998. It reports that a plant which has not been well maintained typically runs a leak rate equal to 20% of its compressed air production capacity. Leaks at that level waste 20 to 30% of compressor output. A well maintained system holds leakage below 10%. We have described what this looks like in practice in a separate account of compressed air leaks and pressure setpoints at another site.
The pipeline
Over the first six months the plant and Mexico Energy Partners built a register of more than two dozen measures. They fall into three groups. Operational changes and training. Control and maintenance work such as scheduling and sensor calibration. Low and medium capex projects including variable frequency drives and lighting retrofits.
Each entry carries an expected investment, an estimated saving in kWh and pesos, a simple payback and a current status. The Energy Coach session works through that register rather than through a report, which is the difference between a pipeline and a list of ideas.
Results after twelve months
| Figure | Value | What it is |
|---|---|---|
| Baseline electricity cost | About MXN 42 million a year | Measured, from CFE billing before the engagement |
| Electricity per unit produced | Down about 13% | Measured, production normalized |
| Annual saving | Estimated at about MXN 5.4 million | Derived from the two rows above |
| Project portfolio | More than two dozen measures | Prioritized and carried into CAPEX planning |
Alongside the numbers, plant leadership reported that energy discussions became more concrete and that maintenance, production and finance worked to shared targets. That is client feedback from one site, not a measured outcome, and it should be weighed as such.
How these figures were built
All four figures are Mexico Energy Partners engagement data. None of them comes from a public source, and the client is anonymized under a non-disclosure agreement. Here is what each one rests on.
The MXN 42 million baseline is the twelve consecutive months of CFE billing immediately before the engagement started, all charges included. The 13% figure is the change in kWh per unit produced between those twelve baseline months and the twelve engagement months, normalized on the plant's own production records. It is a consumption intensity result. It is not a fall in billed peak demand, and it is not a claim that the CFE invoice fell by 13%.
The MXN 5.4 million is the estimate, and it is derived rather than separately billed. Thirteen percent of MXN 42 million is MXN 5.46 million, which is where the figure comes from. Two variables sit outside that calculation. The first is any change in production volume, since a plant making more units burns more kWh even as intensity improves. The second is tariff movement, and 2025 was not a flat year. Read the MXN 5.4 million as cost avoided against the baseline tariff, not as cash removed from the invoice.
For an outside benchmark on the pace of change, the Beverage Industry Environmental Roundtable reported on 31 January 2024 that its participating companies cut their energy use ratio by 11% between 2017 and 2022 across nearly 2,000 facilities. A single site moving 13% in twelve months is a fast result against that sector trend, which is a reason to read the methodology rather than the headline.
What this case does and does not show
One anonymized plant demonstrates a mechanism. It does not establish what savings are available across food and beverage manufacturing in Mexico, and no one should budget from it. What it does show is that where an audit already exists and sits unimplemented, the binding constraint is governance, and governance is cheaper to fix than equipment.
The second limitation is that this engagement moved consumption, not demand. In a Mexican industrial bill that distinction is money. CFE's published GDMTH schedule bills capacity and distribution charges on kilowatts of billable demand, separately from the kilowatt hours consumed in base, intermediate and peak hours. A site can cut kWh and leave its demand charges untouched. Anyone modeling this should read the two halves of the bill separately, which is the subject of our guide to GDMTH demand charges.
The third is that the pipeline register at this site held more than two dozen measures, and this account does not state how many reached implemented status inside the twelve months. That count exists in the engagement file. Ask for it before you use this case to justify a budget, here or in any other food and beverage operation.
Request a baseline review of your own bills
Mexico Energy Partners will build a production normalized energy intensity baseline from your own data and tell you where the bill actually sits. To start, send twelve consecutive months of CFE bills, your tariff class, and monthly production volumes in whatever unit you already report. What comes back is the intensity baseline, the split between energy charges and demand charges, and a first list of measures worth putting into a pipeline with owners against them. We will confirm scope and turnaround once we have seen the data.
Service: Planta en Control
Sector: Beverage manufacturing
Note: The company name has been omitted in accordance with our non-disclosure agreement. All peso figures are in 2025 terms at 2025 CFE tariffs.
Sources
- Energía Hoy, "Aplica CFE un aumento a las tarifas del sector industrial para 2025", 16 January 2025.
- US Department of Energy, "Improving Compressed Air System Performance: A Sourcebook for Industry", compressed air system leaks fact sheet, April 1998.
- Beverage Industry Environmental Roundtable, "BIER Issues Results of 2023 Water, Energy, and Greenhouse Gas Emissions Benchmarking Study", 31 January 2024.
- Comisión Federal de Electricidad, published GDMTH tariff schedule for industrial supply.
- Mexico Energy Partners engagement records for this site, covering the twelve baseline months and the twelve engagement months.