After more than three decades in the Texas-Mexico border logistics industry, Commodities Integrated Logistics, often known as CIL, is investing at least $20 million in its newest industrial project near the Port of Brownsville.
The RGV Nearshoring Industrial Park is the latest logistics warehouse project by CIL, which is a joint venture between Joaquin Spamer and Carlos Garcia.
The first building will be known as Anchor Industrial, which is already under contract with an undisclosed client in the manufacturing sector. But the nearshoring industrial site already has more than half the building under contract with future tenants. About 208,000 square feet of industrial space is still available, according to the company’s website. Anchor Industrial’s construction would cost about $12.4 million, Texas Department of Licensing and Regulation records show.
Rio Grande Valley logistics growth
CIL has three divisions: capital, industrial, and development.
The new industrial park will be constructed near the NAFTA Industrial Park, named after the North American Free Trade Agreement, close to the Port of Brownsville.
CIL operates a similar logistics hub known as the McAllen Nearshoring Industrial Park near the intersection of South Ware Road and Military Highway near the Pharr International Bridge, the Anzaldulas International Bridge, and the McAllen Miller International Airport. McAllen Nearshoring Industrial Park is expected to have 1.5 million square feet of industrial space with parcels between three and 30 acres.
The company has logistics hubs in the Rio Grande Valley cities of Edinburg, Mission, Alamo, Harlingen, Weslaco, and Raymondville as well.
RioPlex as the Third Coast binational hub
Spamer is an industrial real estate heavyweight in the Rio Grande Valley and leads CIL as its CEO. Spamer has built a career spanning four decades in logistics and has worked to develop the binational region’s economic moniker as RioPlex.
“We’re putting a lot of money in the ground,” Spamer said about the project that is expected to cost at least $37 million for construction alone, with the remaining $13 million as the overall project cost for an eventual $50 million project. “We believe in RioPlex. That this is the next manufacturing hub for Texas.”
Spamer hails from Mexico City and went to college in the Rio Grande Valley when the University of Texas-Pan American had just a few thousand students enrolled. At the time, the binational economy stretched from Reynosa to Matamoros and McAllen to Brownsville, and it was agriculture-centric.
From LNG exports to SpaceX rocket launches
Spamer said that he was inspired to invest in Brownsville because there’s been a sea change in the economic landscape – from liquified natural gas export terminals to rocket launches by Elon Musk-led SpaceX.
“You have a unique scenario going on in Brownsville, and it’s led by the port,” Spamer said.
The economic development leaders in Brownsville are “going 100 miles an hour”, Spamer said about city officials such as Brownsville’s mayor, city manager, and Greater Brownsville Incentives Corporation.
The Rio Grande Valley Business Journal recently visited several industrial parks under construction in Brownsville. Economic development officials said that the growth of demand for cement in the region has regularly outpaced supply in recent years. That’s because corporate giants, like SpaceX, are building the foundation for their own projects, such as its massive Gigabay near what was once Boca Chica beach, now the city of Starbase. As a result, the rest of the companies along SpaceX’s supply chain are racing to build out their own industrial sites simply to catch up with the rocket business that’s trying to reach Mars, someday.
As for the mystery manufacturing sector tenant cementing its spot inside CIL’s RGV Nearshoring Industrial Park, “It’s a major company that wants to do business in Brownsville,” Spamer said.
Anchor Industrial is expected to take about eight months under construction and is expected to open in July 2026.
