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Oxxo, the convenience store chain owned by the Mexican company FEMSA, has temporarily closed all 191 of its stores in the northern border city of Nuevo Laredo, Tamaulipas, due to what FEMSA calls a crime wave in the area that poses safety concerns for employees.
FEMSA said a wave of violence has made working in their stores unsafe for staff, though specifics were not disclosed. FEMSA also temporarily closed seven Oxxo gas stations in the area.
“At Oxxo and Oxxo Gas, we have suspended operations in Nuevo Laredo due to acts of violence that have compromised the safety of our employees,” the company, based in Monterrey, Nuevo León, said in a statement.
Despite the closures, FEMSA assured employees that their salaries and benefits would remain unaffected.
The conglomerate, which also owns 17 Coca-Cola bottling plants in Mexico, added that it is working closely with relevant authorities — including the National Defense Ministry (Sedena) — to ensure a safe reopening.
A spokesman for the Tamaulipas state public security ministry, Jorge Cuéllar Montoya, ruled out extortion as the cause for the closures, according to the newspaper El Universal.
However, local reports by several other Mexican newspapers indicate that organized crime groups in the region have been pressuring businesses, including Oxxo, with demands related to gas distribution and operational hours.
In one incident that reportedly occurred last week, criminal groups took two Oxxo employees hostage, asking them for information on various topics. According to El Universal, that incident forced Oxxo’s hand.
Cuéllar highlighted that the Mexican Army had deployed 100 soldiers and other personnel to Nuevo Laredo within the past week. According to a statement from Sedena, these are elite members of the army’s Special Forces Corps who will reinforce the current security measures in Nuevo Laredo.
The state Security Ministry said it plans to install alarm buttons and enhance security measures at the stores and gas stations. However, FEMSA has not specified when operations will resume or commented on the security upgrades.
“We hope the company will be able to resume operations soon,” Cuéllar Montoya said.
The violence in Nuevo Laredo comes amid broader concerns about crime in Tamaulipas, although President Andrés Manuel López Obrador has downplayed the severity of crime in the region and highlighted a decrease in homicide rates.
The notoriously violent criminal group the Gulf Cartel is based in Tamaulipas. One of its leaders and three other alleged members were arrested about two weeks ago.
FEMSA, which operated 21,970 Oxxos in Mexico at the end of 2023, recently reported that its total consolidated revenues for the second quarter of 2024 were 198.7 billion pesos (US $10.6 billion), a 12.2% increase over the same quarter in 2023 but a decline of 9.7% from the first quarter of 2024.
Earlier this year, FEMSA announced it would invest around 170 billion pesos (US $9.1 billion) in growing its operations in Mexico over the next five years. That includes adding some 8,000 new stores over the next seven years, plus creating more cashierless Oxxo Smart and Oxxo Grab & Go stores. FEMSA opened its first in Monterrey early last year.
The company, one of the nation’s largest employers, has more than 280,000 employees. It announced on Tuesday it plans to install new technology at Oxxo stores that will use “cash recycling” to allow ATM-type withdrawals via the cashier using cash garnered from onsite store sales that is deposited into a secure system.
With reports from El Universal, El País, El Financiero and Expansión
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