JLT Freezone outsells Abu Dhabi’s Kizad by a factor of 10

The Dubai Multi Commodities Centre’s Jumeirah Lake Towers Freezone has welcomed over a thousand new companies so far this year, bringing the total of registered companies in the JLT to 3,600, while the Khalifa Industrial Zone Abu Dhabi is way behind with a hundred new companies setting up in the past year.

However, Kizad officials told The National that this is actually double the original target for the industrial zone billed as a rival to Dubai’s landmark Jebel Ali Freezone. It’s another sign of the recovery in the UAE economy over the past year thanks to high oil revenues and an influx of money and people from countries affected by the Arab Spring,

DMCC success story

The DMCC is often overlooked and confused with the very much less successful Dubai International Financial Centre which is suffering from a depression in financial transactions. Many JLT companies are small enterprises but there are also multinationals like De Beers and Harley Davidson among the new names.

From nothing a few years back the JLT is now home to 23,000 residents and 10,000 work in the freezone companies. It is headquartered in the landmark Almas or Diamond Tower, home of Dubai’s $25 billion-a-year diamond trade.

Kizad’s anchor tenant is the new $5.7 billion Emirates Aluminium smelter whose second $3.8 billion phase is under development. The freezone aggressively recruited staff from Jebel Ali with large pay increases but has clearly not found it easy to attract major new tenants in the current tough global economic environment.

Jebel Ali No1

Many firms still prefer to be in Dubai’s Jebel Ali because it has easy access to the transportation infrastructure of the commercial trading hub of the region and critical mass with many thousands of companies already located there.

On the other hand, it is symptomatic of the lively business culture and high level of investment in the UAE that such competition exists between freezones and that can only promote higher levels of efficiency and cost effectiveness by comparison to the monopolistic operations found in some rival countries.