SPC Free Zone, Sharjah Publishing City, in the United Arab Emirates. Image: SBA
By Porter Anderson, Editor-in-Chief | @Porter_Anderson
Web and E-Commerce Development
With the 2025 edition of the Sharjah Booksellers Conference set for April 7 and 8, the United Kingdom-based company Supadu has announced that it has made a partnership with Sharjah’s SPC Free Zone to provide the program’s international publishers with Web site support and e-commerce design.
Our Publishing Perspectives readers will know SPF Free Zone better by its original name, Sharjah Publishing City. Opened in 2017 by the Sheikh Sultan bin Mohammed Al Qasimi, Sharjah’s author-ruler, the 40,000-square-meter facility was devised as a Middle Eastern and North African home for a range of international publishing houses, organizations and institutions, as well as publishing service vendors, distributors and printers.
Supadu’s involvement, according to that company’s CCO, Sarah Arbuthnot, is expected to involve expanding the reach of publishers who are operating in the Free Zone program, and bring more literary selection to readers. In other words, the program is a means to help participating publishers gain traction in digital operations and business for themselves.
The work Supadu will do is expected to be available to publishing interests working both in Arabic and English, and to enhance both physical and digital fulfillment services for multi-format distribution.
As it has turned out, the SPC Free Zone has evolved in eight years into a more broadly positioned economic zone in the United Arab Emirates‘ third emirate, offering licenses now for more than 2,000 business activities across sectors including e-commerce, technology, consulting, and general trading, well-positioned near Dubai International Airport.
By some counts, there are close to 50 free zones in the United Arab Emirates, each offering 100-percent foreign ownership, tax exemptions, customs benefits, and—as at Sharjah’s free zone—greatly streamlined registration and administrative protocols. A free zone will normally have an emphasis on one or more industries, as SPC Free Zone has its focus on book publishing.
The program is a part of the operations of the Sharjah Book Authority, which is chaired by Sheikha Bodour Al Qasimi and has as its CEO Ahmed bin Rakkad Al Ameri.
Meanwhile, the Sharjah Booksellers Conference is to release news of its program and agenda shortly, and we’ll of course have that for our readership as it becomes available.
More from Publishing Perspectives on international events is here, more on Sharjah Book Authority and its programs is here, more on SPC Free Zone is here, and more on publishing in the United Arab Emirates is here.