MBFZ to surpass 10,000 worker mark by December

THE MONTEGO Bay Free Zone (MBFZ) is set to surpass 10,000 workers by year end. The historic feat will become a reality with National Pen Jamaica’s planned expansion of its labour pool from the current 175 to 235.

The 665,000-square-foot business park has been supporting a generation of success since inception in March 1985, when Akom Garment Manufacturer opened its operation, occupying the first available building of 35,000 square feet of space.

During the peak of the ‘807’-garment manufacturing era, the zone had over 430,000 square feet of space being utilised for garment production and more than 6,000 persons employed, but production would wane by the year 2000, just as the demand for more space for the outsourcing sector saw the Port Authority of Jamaica increasing its acreage at the MBFZ with a 20-acre plot. Four buildings have been constructed on the 20-acre plot, with the most recent one completed in March of this year.

The outsourcing sector was developed through a partnership between MBFZ and the former Cable and Wireless (now FLOW) subsidiary Jamaica Digiport International (JDI) prior to the liberalisation of the telecom sector.

This began with data operations and reservations services in 1990. The restructuring of the telecommunications sector paved the way for the development of the business processing outsourcing (BPO) sector, with the MBFZ being the prime mover in the Government-driven shift to information and communication technology.

Since then, the MBFZ has provided facilities for BPO, starting with data operations, and later on software development, electronic assembling, reservation services, and, since the last decade, customer support services, sales, finance and accounting, admin and HR support and technical support.

The MBFZ now boasts 32 service providers and has the largest concentration of BPO companies in Jamaica, including global operators Conduent (formerly Xerox) and Teleperformance.

In keeping with the service-oriented environment that characterises western Jamaica, the MBFZ continues to provided a nurturing environment for private-sector development in BPO, where companies have expanded to occupy spaces in private sector-owned facilities. One such example is Vistaprint, which opened its first centre in the MBFZ in 2003 and has grown into a multinational public company and expanded in private sector-owned land in its own building in 2013. Conduent Jamaica, which has its genesis in the MBFZ (through various acquisitions), has done the same kind of expansion into private sector-owned facilities in Montego Bay and Kingston.

The MBFZ’s supporting environment also creates critical linkages in telecommunications, supporting the growing BPO businesses.