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Jafza with a drawl
“Whatever else you can say about it, Dubai is certainly all about business and economic development,” said Gregg Robinson, executive director of the Orangeburg County Development Commission.
Robinson was one of the delegates from South Carolina who recently visited Dubai. Others were Bill Cronin, director of global business development for the S.C. Department of Commerce; Jeannine Kees, chairwoman of the Orangeburg County Development commission; Orangeburg County Administrator Bill Clark; and Orangeburg County Council Chairman Harry F. Wimberly.
Preparing to enter the South Carolina market, Jafza International has formed a local entity, Jafza South Carolina LLC, opened a North American headquarters in Charleston and began locating employees in the Lowcountry. The com pany expects to award the contract for the master plan’s first phase of development in Orangeburg this spring, with a draft to be completed by July and a more concrete plan by September.
In spite of these steps, Heath admitted it would be difficult, if not impossible, to take Jebel Ali and transfer it directly to Orangeburg.
“First of all, there won’t be all this sand,” he joked, gesturing to the fine dust kicked up by every car that passed by.
“Obviously, it’s going to be a different situation in South Carolina because we have no control over permitting and other things we do here in Jebel Ali,” he said. “If you want to build a factory, you submit your building plans, and if everything is in order, our engineering department can issue a building permit within 48 hours.”
A business can set up shop in the Jebel Ali free zone in about 30 days, where in the city, it can take between 60 to 180 days, he said.
“Don’t forget, here, we are the higher authority. We are like our own little city. We have our own municipal government. We can set the rules. We can monitor construction, and we can issue fines to companies that violate our rules. That will be difficult to emulate in South Carolina.”
Instead, the company is focusing on how to enter the North American market and capture the crown as the hemisphere’s pre-eminent service provider.
“We have a team looking at the issue of services right now. And among our recent RFPs is an analysis of market demand that will specifically look at the question of services people would like to have access to that they aren’t getting already,” Heath said.
Jafza doesn’t come to an area to develop a cheap industrial project and then cash out, Heath said.
“When we come into an area, we are in it for the long haul,” he said. “We’re not trying to add some value and then flip the property. We want to be a vehicle for investment by other companies, and that can only be based on the services we provide."
Planning for the future
Jebel Ali is constantly in the process of planning; it recently finished its comprehensive 40-year plan. And this planning gives Jafza the advantage of flexibility in the event of a trade slow down.
“If global trade slows down, we don’t have to build, but the point is, our planning is in place, our designs are in place, and all we have to do is initiate the contracts,” he said.
That principle will be applied in South Carolina, too.
“In the event the development of the Orangeburg site dramatically exceeds our expectations, we would rather look at acquiring additional acreage down the road, than doing anything as potentially disruptive as vertical construction,” Heath said.
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