Can new industry fulfil its promise?

Tuesday 23rd January 2007, 12:00AM GMT.

THE future of the Island’s fulfilment industry rests on a knife edge – in spite of a new policy that has forced a number of ‘sham’ firms to leave Jersey.

In November the UK government called the policy – which ended the right of 13 UK internet retailers to use Jersey to sell cheap goods such as CDs and DVDs – ‘disappointing’ and has called on the States to do more. But its author, Economic Development Minister Philip Ozouf, hopes that he has done enough to protect a sector of the economy that has been feted as an important counter-weight to the all-powerful finance industry. Although the effect of the policy on Westminster’s thinking is uncertain, it has had a clear impact here. Nearly 70 staff at Jersey Post’s fulfilment subsidiary Offshore Solutions Ltd have lost their jobs because eight of the firm’s 11 clients have been told that they must leave the Island by the end of next month.

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