Dominican Republic Trip - Day 3

Wednesday, October 24, 2007

The third day of the DR trip started with a visit to the Parque Industrial ITABO - PIISA, which is a very modern free trade zone industrial park located right on the Carribean Sea. This park has an impressive number of companies representing a variety of industries, including a Q1 supplier to Ford (see below).

The free trade zone concept is one that has been in place in the DR for more than 30 years. It consists of areas designated by the government (most are privately held and others are owned by the government) as areas to which materials can be imported and exported without taxation. This was originally set up for the apparel industry, so fabric could be imported to the free zones without tax and the apparel could be exported without tax. The same concept applies to other industries and works well for parts with high labor content.

One supplier in this park is Control Devices, Inc., which is a Ford Q1 supplier (site code S930V). They produce switches and other small electrical devices for Ford and other OEMs.

From there, we travelled across town to Las Americas Industrial Free Zone, which is owned & managed by:

• Luis MI. Pellerano - l.pellerano@zfla.com
• Claudia Pellerano - marketing@zfla.com

While there, we visited two suppliers.

The first was Pixley Richards, which is a small precision molding company. They have 6 machines currently, ranging from 110-165 tons. They are currently producing the housing for smoke detectors. They also produce switch housings that are sent across town to Control Devices. Mold designs are done in the USA, but this site does have the ability to do testing and quality checks and hold very tight tolerances of the parts they produce.

The final supplier visited at this park was Power-One, which is a producer of electrical devices such as DC-DC converters, AC-DC power supplies, etc.