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Dubai: Building a vision
By Dan McCue
Staff Writer
Editor’s note: Business Journal staff writer Dan McCue recently spent a week in Dubai with a delegation from South Carolina.
Walking into the top floor of “The Wheel House,” a conference space in downtown Dubai, it quickly became evident to the delegation from South Carolina that Jafza International had been stoking the buzz for the Palmetto state.
Throughout the room, placards greeted the five South Carolinians:
Empowering business.
Partnering success.
Opportunities unlimited.
Signs of global trade were everywhere. The conference space owned by one of the companies set to change the future of Orangeburg County overlooked a sea of cargo containers, and inside the room were companies that wanted to do business in South Carolina.
Grace Soriano-Brown, contracts manager for Sider Gulf FZCO, a trader of steel and stainless steel products, clearly responded to the message.
Her company had been considering an expansion in either the New York City metropolitan area or just outside Washington, D.C., when it learned of Jafza’s purchase of the Orangeburg site and immediately decided South Carolina is where it needs to be.
Similarly, M.L. Soni, managing director of M.R.S. Packaging Ltd., a company that works with seven U.S.-based candy and snack foods manufacturers, said he wants to establish a presence in Orangeburg “to provide my clients with the kind of logistics solutions they need to help grow their companies.”
Presentations by Gregg Robinson, executive director of the Orangeburg County Development Commission, and Bill Cronin, director of global business development for the S.C. Department of Commerce, before a room crowded with Middle Eastern business executives and decision makers, drew an enthusiastic response.
Representatives of at least six international companies said their firms are determined to locate facilities at Jafza South Carolina LLC’s planned logistics and commerce park in Orangeburg.
A delegation of five traveled from South Carolina to the United Arab Emirates the week of March 10 for their first face-to-face discussions with the clients who will likely be among the first generation of companies to locate at Jafza’s Orangeburg facility, its first in North America.
Those taking part in the economic development mission were Cronin; Robinson; Jeannine Kees, chairwoman of the commission; Orangeburg County Administrator Bill Clark; and Orangeburg County Council Chairman Harry F. Wimberly.
While company officials said during a March 11 luncheon at Jafza’s 81-square-mile free trade zone that their plans are in preliminary stages, their combined planned investment in South Carolina would be well in excess of $50 million and would result in the creation of an initial 250 jobs.
Chuck Heath, managing director of Jafza International, Jafza South Carolina LLC’s parent company, said a marketing survey conducted in the past 10 days prompted strong interest in the possible expansion of a total of 33 companies into South Carolina as a direct result of the company’s purchase of more than 1,300 acres in Orangeburg last September. The target date for companies to start populating the first phase of the development is early 2010.
“None of us really knew exactly what to expect when we arrived here,” Kees said, “but it certainly exceeded all our expectations.”
Commerce happening everywhere
Jebel Ali, the 23-year-old free trade zone, boasts a waiting list of more than 1,000 companies wishing to locate there.
Among those who have established a presence include Bosch, GE Energy, Hitachi, Lipton, Nestle and Danzas Logistics Centers, which handles all of General Motors’ spare parts for the Middle East.
Heath expects all available space in the free trade zone, including a large parcel currently under development, to be sold out within the next two years.
But that doesn’t mean the zone will stagnate. Far from it.
Already, work is underway on what’s being billed as the world’s largest airport directly adjacent to the massive trade zone, and the 40-year development plan for the booming port, which expects cargo volumes to grow to 60 million TEUs a year.
At present the port handles more than 9.9 million TEUs annually, more than every port on the U.S. East Coast combined.
“Our planning is in place for the future,” Heath said. “Our design is in place. But remember, we don’t have to build unless the market demands it.”
Prior to establishing the Jebel Ali free zone in 1985, Heath and others involved in the project took a cold, hard look at the factors that would make a company want to locate in a facility like the one they were envisioning.
“In all, we probably spent two years analyzing the situation, and out of that came a measure of the 12 criteria people look at when they go into a free zone,” Heath said.
“Originally, tax savings was the No. 1 factor. Now, it’s No. 7. One reason is all the incentives governments are offering to businesses these days. That’s leveled the playing field to an extent. Now, the No. 1 criteria is the quality of the facility with connectivity being a close second, and removal of red tape is another.”
As an example of the latter, Heath said the building permitting process in Jebel Ali has been streamlined for efficiency.
“You can submit a building plan to Jafza’s engineering department, and if all looks right, we can issue a building permit in 48 hours,” he said.
“Obviously, it’s a different situation in South Carolina, and things like that will be difficult to emulate. As a result, we’re looking at a wide range of services we can provide that others haven’t even thought about.”
Jafza is in Orangeburg for the long haul, and that long-term commitment guides the initial design and development, Heath said.
“The way you prosper is service to client,” he said.
“You have to recognize that companies who are scouting locations want the freedom to do business the way they want to do it, and you have to craft the services you provide to them accordingly.”
S.C. builds momentum
Throughout their respective speeches, Robinson and Cronin emphasized the ease of doing business in South Carolina.
The state’s infrastructure, quality of life and location would position them to be within a day’s drive of all of the eastern United States’ most significant markets and more than 280 million consumers, they said.
“Together we’re all working to provide you with speed to market and an ease of occupancy in the U.S. that will help your business grow,” Cronin said.
“And that growth is important to us,” Robinson said later.
“Because we not only want you to come to South Carolina, we also want you to expand your business once you’re here.”
Their talks inspired more than a half hour of questions on everything from incentives to the basics of doing business in the United States to the South Carolina labor market and the range of housing that is available here for the management teams that could be relocating to the state to oversee their companies’ expansions.
Afterward, Kees described the day as one in which the South Carolina delegation’s “mouths were wide open with surprise and excitement—and the interest in our project expressed by prospective tenants of the site continually amazed us.”
Marketing South Carolina
While the South Carolinians were in Dubai, much of the discussions between county officials, the state and Jafza focused on how they can most effectively collaborate on marketing the project and take advantage of Jafza’s unique position in the international logistics and commerce park arena.
“One of the reasons we’re here is we wanted to see first hand what Jafza is doing here in the Middle East and firmly get our minds around the concept and history of their efforts in Dubai,” Cronin said. “Our other intent is to emphasize to these companies that we want them to use our community, Orangeburg and the state as a whole, as a springboard into the U.S. market.”
Robinson agreed.
“Face-to-face discussions with these prospective new South Carolinians is vital to our economic development effort.”
Dan McCue is a staff writer for the Business Journal. E-mail him at dmccue@scbiznews.com.
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