Baytik Industrial Oasis: Latest Developments 2013-2014

Osama Al Khajah, Founder and President of EBTIKAR Association and Chairman of Baytik Industrial Oasis, talks the latest developments in the Baytik Industrial Oasis.

“In comparison, in 2011 we had in our initial operations one good tenant which was Siemens MENA Center which is an engineering, machining and maintenance center for Siemens products in energy and metal industries. This represents around 10% occupancy. Today we have achieved over 50% of real operations. When I say real operations it means the tenants have already established commissions and started production. We have over 60% of tenants from different sectors including fiberglass, manufacturing, industry, engineering, oil and gas, and other sectors. According to the progress of BIO, Phase one is expected to be fully operational by the end of this year and fully rented by September of this year. We will shortly move based on this progress to develop Phase two of BIO to be built on land of about 70,000 square meters,” says Al Khajah.

There are signs that Bahrain is witnessing a renewal of business activities. According to Al Khajah, “Actually since the middle of 2012 we started receive an increasing number of queries from international companies as well as from local and joint ventures regarding a location or services that BIO can provide. In 2011, naturally the year was not a normal year for Bahrain. Some queries were going on but some decisions were postponed or delayed especially by FDIs. But what we witness now is that even those that were postponed are back to Bahrain and back to dialoging with us and the BIIP.”

As for setting up offices in BIO, Al Khajah sees the biggest advantage in the high standard offered: “The reasons that we think we can attract some of those tenants include the fact that the standard of the design and the facilities that BIO offers is a very high international standard to the extent that most of the existing tenants in BIO now are international companies. The majority of them are international companies, many of which are companies who studied the market before coming to BIO, including Bahrain. They compared what other similar parks offer to what BIO offers, not just in Bahrain but in the region. They ultimately made the decision to be in Bahrain,”  he explains.

“The second reason comprises of the geographical location, cost of doing business, ease of doing business and other commercial criteria. Some of the companies that selected BIO are Siemens, Kraft, Eurotech, Aramex, Bahrain Fiberglass and others,” concludes Al Khajah.