After six years of being run by GreenCape, the Atlantis Special Economic Development Zone (ASEZ) has been given over to Wesgro to manage.
Francis Jackson, GreenCape ASEZ Project Executive, said after a successful partnership since 2013, the project was handed over at the end of September.
He explained that Wesgro has been appointed by the provincial government to establish the registration of a provincial entity that meets the requirements of the SEZ Act.
The idea of the Atlantis SEZ was to create a green tech hub.
“When the Department of Trade and Industry launched the SEZ programme in 2013 Atlantis was nominated to participate,” Jackson said. “GreenCape continued to represent the Western Cape through its Project Management Unit until 30 September, the point where the Atlantis SEZ team, incubated in Wesgro, was ready to take over and move the project into a provincial entity as per the SEZ Act, and take the zone forward into the future.”
According to Tim Harris, CEO of Wesgro, a collaborative theme has been the secret to Atlantis punching above its weight in investment promotion, skills development and enterprise development, leveraging an ecosystem of aligned entities in such a way that the sum impact is greater than the parts.
He said: “The combined work of Wesgro, The City of Cape Town, InvestSA and GreenCape in promoting and landing investors is a uniquely effective approach that has yielded results.”
