Company relocation to mauritius. is this good?

Question

a supplier of car components (they also manufacturer of car seats) located in the uk midlands is planning to relocate to mauritius for reasons to do with the cost of production.

they have a market in europe; countries like spain, italy and germany buy their manufactured goods.
the company supplies car components to volkswagen, the psa group (peugeot and citreon), and fiat.

is mauritius a good country to move to, for cost reasons; shipping to the market place should be considered?

support your opinion with reasons.

Answer 1

Hard to explain. A lot of companies set up headquarters there for their indain ocean branches. I think 80% of all wool products come from mauritius(someone told someone i know this so this might not be accurate)...... Microsoft, NIKE...PUMA..they are all there. Second highest GDP (i think those are the right letters...a bit of insomnia.....but my typing is starting to go) in Africa

Its like on the line between 3rd world and modern. Definatly cheaper to produce stuff.

My parents are from there and i've been there tons of times. The towns are sorta backwater, but the cities are cities.

You can do the near sweat shop wages for labor.
My dad basically owns a dollar store there..he exports from america and it makes money after the exporting fees.

I forgot exactly...my dad had an issue with the import / export taxes and was fighting them for a bit......but i think exporting from mauritus is pretty cheap.

Also...20,000$ american dollars a year is a decent upper middle class lifestyle there.

Answer 2

V. poor choice in my view - main 'industry' seems to be sugar cane, tourists & financial services. Can't see any history of engineering or manufacturing (so where will the workforce education/skills come from ?) and they have exactly one Port - so how will the finished product reach Europe (do Container ships leave the port every hour ???).

India or China would be a lot better ...

Can't imagine why Mauritius would be chosen .. other than the fact that the Directors can justify spending a lot of time there before the Company finally goes bust ...