Cayman Enterprise City - Update
Cayman Enterprise City has been out of the spotlight most of the summer, but that doesn’t mean there wasn’t a lot happening.
Their offices in the HSBC House in Baytown Plaza have been a hive of activity over the last couple of months with contracts signed, companies licensed and construction on interior fit-outs for new tenants. By mid-August, the company had 28 tenants signed or signed and licensed, with several other companies on the cusp of signing.
Then, of course, there was the installation of a 150,000-pound vault that was recently delivered to the island. The state-of-the-art vault, which would take several days to break into, is capable of storing US$4 billion of gold bars, said Hilary McKenzie-Cahill, Cayman Enterprise City’s vice president marketing and business development.
“It is the highest rated vault in the CARICOM Region utilizing all of the latest technology available in its composite materials and security design,” she said.
The vault is being installed to store the gold that a new Cayman Enterprise City tenant - Argentum SEZC - will produce with a precious metals processor. Argentum, which will have a 10-person staff here in Cayman, will operate out of Cayman Enterprise City’s Commodities Park, one of six industry clusters that make up the special economic zone.
Argentum will process, melt and cast both gold and silver here in Cayman in a self-contained unit that has a capacity to melt 30,000 troy ounces of gold or 17,000 troy ounces of silver per hour. It could pour and cast nine 400-ounce gold bars and 35 100-ounce silver bars per hour.
David Clark, the principal of Argentum, said the unit would become the first precious metals processor and bullion storage operation in the CARICOM Region.
“Located strategically in the Cayman Islands because of the synergies available due to the Islands’ robust financial infrastructure and related industry participants, coupled with the island’s firmly established existing banking, insurance, accounting, advisory, fund and legal structures, made the Cayman Islands the clear logical choice for this necessary new industry in today’s volatile economic climate,” he said.
Cayman Enterprise City CEO Jason Blick said there’s been a lot of interest in the zone’s Commodities Park and that about 40 per cent of the tenants so far will work out of that cluster. Another 40 per cent of the tenants have been from the United States or Canada technology sector and will work out of the Cayman Internet & Technology Park.
“The rest [of the tenants] are split almost equally between the other parks,” he said.
New companies
In addition to Argentum, some of the other companies that have established in the zone include Meridian SEZC; Latitude19 Technology; O2Micro International; Conscious SEZC and Tiggit Software.
Latitude19 Technology is a start-up e-commerce and payment gateway solution provider. Its president, Tim Moore, said excessive regulation, immigration and taxation policies in the United States inhibit business growth, making that country less competitive.
“That situation does not exist here in the Cayman Islands,” he said. “CEC enables small-to-medium entrepreneurs like us to succeed.”
O2Micro, which has offices worldwide, develops and markets innovative power management and e-commerce products for the computer, consumer, industrial, automotive and communications markets. Jim Keim, a director of the company, said Cayman Enterprise City enabled O2Mirco to more proficiently manage its global operations by being able to rapidly expand its business and staffing in the Cayman Islands.
“As an industry leader in power management, it also enables us to effectively manage and protect our intellectual property,” he said.
Dave Dorr, a director of Meridian SEZC, said his company conducted an intense multi-jurisdictional review of where to establish a headquarters and ultimately chose the Cayman Islands.
“CEC was the best place to head-quarter our business,” he said. “CEC offers a 21st century business trifecta: world class service providers, a legal framework that is unambiguous and a Government that supports global business.”
Conscious Asset is a specialized consulting firm from Canada that wants to expand globally, said its Managing Director James Reyes-Picknell.
“We are expanding outside of North America... and wanted a head office location with access to other global companies, state-of-the-art communications infrastructure, good international travel connections, a business friendly tax environment and close to our legacy markets in the US and Canada,” he said. “CEC provides all of that in location that is well developed, attractive for its globally minded residents, [has] amazing networking opportunities and its climate [is] free of the snow, cold and the dark of our Canadian winters.
“It’s head and shoulders above any of the other locations we considered.”
Robert Powell of Tiggit Software, a smart-phone app development firm, said his company believed in got the best from its employees by providing excellent facilities and a good work/life balance in great locations.
“Cayman Enterprise City allows us to have world-class facilities and provide employees with a unique location,” he said. “Tax saving is a big motivator, but for a small company we are more interested in top-line growth combined with high quality lifestyle. We are able to use CEC to take time to develop product whilst not being too far from our clients. We see the tax advantages as an enabler rather than a sole motivator.”
