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Setting Up a Free Zone Company in Dubai
Realise your dream of becoming a company owner in the UAE. Our experts can help you set up a Dubai free zone company quickly, so that you can enjoy benefits like 100% company ownership.
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The United Arab Emirates (UAE) stands out as one of the Middle East’s jewels when it comes to advantageous and rewarding countries in which to live and work. The West Asian country continues to thrive economically and culturally, so it should be no great surprise that considerable numbers of ambitious entrepreneurs have also long been attracted to the territory.
If you are interested in starting out in business in the UAE yourself, setting up a free zone company in Dubai could be the perfect way to do it. It can present to you a wide range of benefits, such as a relatively quick and straightforward company setup process, as well as the opportunity for 100% ownership of your company, and 100% repatriation of capital and profits.
With our complete project-managed service here at Cranbrook Legal, we can enable you to establish your Dubai free zone company with the minimum of fuss. Our service is available on a pre-agreed fixed-fee basis to help you budget, and covers every essential element of the process, so that you can concentrate on making your business in the UAE a success.
Here at Cranbrook Legal, we realise that the prospect of establishing a free zone company in Dubai might be daunting or overwhelming for you. This is why we provide a complete project-managed service, designed to take you through every step that is required in order to set up a UAE free zone company.
Although the process required in order to set up a free zone company in this part of the world has been designed to be relatively minimal as a means of attracting foreign-national entrepreneurs to the UAE, you might still understandably be concerned about certain aspects of this process.
So, whatever questions you have, and whatever elements of the free zone setup process might be causing you worry or consternation, you are always free to ask our capable and seasoned professionals for advice and guidance.
A Dubai free zone company is a company that has been set up in one of the “free zones” contained within the United Arab Emirates city of Dubai.
A free zone – which may also be referred to as a “free trade zone”, or a “free zone authority” – is an economic area that is subject to its own specific regulations. Those regulations only apply to the specific free zone, and do not apply outside the free zone.
The first free zone in the UAE – Jebel Ali Free Zone – was established in 1985. Since then, more than 40 free zones have cropped up around various parts of the UAE, as part of the Government’s efforts to help diversify the country’s economy and attract foreign investors.
Although – as we stated above – free zones exist around the broader UAE, Dubai offers a particularly strong choice of free zones concentrated in one Emirate. That perhaps shouldn’t be so surprising, given that it is the most populous of the seven emirates that make up the UAE, and is an exciting destination sought-after among those looking to excel in business in this part of the world.
With free zones having been largely established in the UAE in the first place in order to lure foreign investors to the country, the process of setting up a Dubai free zone company is relatively easy.
So, there is comparatively little paperwork required from those who wish to launch a Dubai free zone company, and the setup process can be done quickly.
However, if you wish to establish a free zone company in Dubai, you will still be expected to fulfil certain requirements. These will include:
To find out more about what exactly you will need to do in order to establish a Dubai free zone company, and to receive tailored advice, please feel free to contact our experts at Cranbrook Legal. You are welcome to call us on +971 4 286 3944, or to use our online form to request a free consultation.
The benefits of choosing a Dubai free zone in which to establish your company in the UAE include:
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The following is a brief rundown of the steps that you will need to go through in order to establish a Dubai free zone company:
If the above sounds like a daunting succession of steps to negotiate simply to establish a free zone company in Dubai, don’t worry. Here at Cranbrook Legal, our skilled, knowledgeable, and experienced specialists can do much of the hard work for you.
When you arrange a free consultation with us and choose to work with our team, it will simply be a case of providing us with the relevant information, which we will then be able to use to set up your company. So, you won’t need to worry about the more “technical” aspects of the process.
One of the first things that you will need to do in the process of setting up a free zone company in Dubai, is determine the most suitable business activity for your company.
Some of the most popular types of business activity carried out in Dubai free zones include:
While many free zones in the UAE are sector-specific – which would present you with the opportunity to be surrounded by other companies in the same field as you, and with which you could make connections – it is also possible to undertake multiple types of business activity in a free zone.
To begin talking to our immigration lawyers in Dubai about the possibilities and which business activities might be the best match to your aspirations, please don’t hesitate to arrange a free consultation with us via our online contact form, or to call +971 4 286 3944.
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It is natural that if you are interested in establishing a Dubai free zone company, you will not wish to pay a higher amount to do so than is strictly necessary.
So, in the interests of transparency, we have below set out the prices that you can expect to pay to set up a business across a range of Dubai free zones:
While the above information was believed to be correct and accurate at the time of writing, factors such as pricing and typical business setup time are liable to change.
So, if cost is a particular concern for you as someone who is thinking about setting up a free zone company in Dubai, we would urge you to contact our team here at Cranbrook Legal – whether by calling +971 4 286 3944 or arranging a free consultation – for further advice and guidance.
The UAE as a whole is home to more than 50 free zones, with a significant proportion of these being situated in Dubai. Each free zone varies from the next, including when it comes to the specific documentation and processes involved. So, there is no single answer to the question of what documents will be required in order to establish a free zone company in Dubai.
The below, however, are some of the standard documents that you can generally expect to require when you are looking to establish a business in a Dubai free zone:
Our knowledgeable and skilled professionals at Cranbrook Legal can help you gather the documents that you will need in order to set up your free zone company in Dubai. Please feel free to call our UAE-based team on +971 4 286 3944 to find out more.
The entire process of setting up a free zone company in the UAE can potentially take as little as seven working days, when you join forces with reputable and seasoned company setup experts such as the professionals of Cranbrook Legal.
Of course, there are certain aspects of the process of setting up a Dubai free zone company that can be time-consuming, such as liaising with relevant government authorities and departments, gathering all the crucial legal documents, and deciding on the business activities that you wish to undertake.
All of this gives you all the more reason to place your trust in a company – such as Cranbrook Legal – that has hard-won and in-depth knowhow and experience in this area, and an excellent reputation for helping all manner of foreign-national entrepreneurs to establish a Dubai company.
The UAE takes pride in making itself as attractive as possible to investors from other countries, and this is very much reflected in the visa situation, too.
As a general rule, a foreign national can expect to be able to open a Dubai free zone company without having a UAE residence visa first. However, such factors as your nationality, your tax residence status, and the exact nature of your business may impact on your ability to run your Dubai business as someone who does not have a residence visa here.
In any case, the great news is that if you do wish to secure a residence visa for the UAE, setting up a Dubai free zone company is the quickest way to do it. And once you do secure a UAE residence visa, you will have the right to live in any of the seven emirates that make up the UAE.
Opening a business in the UAE can be an excellent route to obtaining a residency visa for this in-demand West Asian country – not least because it is also the fastest way.
However, you might be unfamiliar with the specific steps involved in trying to obtain a residence visa for the UAE, and you may be worried about the potential to make mistakes that could result in your application being rejected.
The team here at Cranbrook Legal is highly knowledgeable and experienced – not just with regard to all aspects of UAE immigration law, but also in relation to setting up a company in this part of the Middle East.
So, for a single fixed fee, we are excellently placed to hold your hand from the start to the end of the process, even advising you on what to do next in the event that your initial visa application is unsuccessful.
The likelihood of your application being refused will be very low if you partner with our UAE immigration solicitors, who have a superb track record of helping our clients to a positive outcome.
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It is important to understand that if you intend to use your bank account in order to do business in the UAE, it will be necessary for you to open a corporate bank account. Indeed, entrepreneurs in the UAE are legally prohibited from using their personal bank accounts for business purposes.
As a general rule, a corporate account in the UAE should be a current account, so that there will be no issues with the account handling high volumes of transactions. It typically takes from around two weeks to four weeks to open a corporate current account in the UAE.
One of the most important elements of the process of opening such a bank account in the West Asian country, is ensuring you have all the essential documents for this.
The exact documents that you will require will depend on what company type your business is, as well as what specific bank you choose. Broadly speaking, however, you can expect to require the following documents for this process:
Our team at Cranbrook Legal can assist you with the process of gathering together these documents, which you will then be able to use to open a corporate bank account in the UAE relatively quickly.
One of the most distinctive things about the UAE is that its citizens only make up a relatively small proportion of the total population; around 15%. The remaining, approximately 85% of the population of the country is made up of expatriates.
This should make it relatively unsurprising that it is perfectly possible for a foreign national to open both personal and business bank accounts in Dubai. However, it is also important to remember that there are various types of bank account in the UAE, and if you are not legally a resident of the country, you will only be able to open a savings account.
As we mentioned above, though, setting up a free zone company in Dubai provides a quick route to obtaining a residence visa for the UAE. Once you have secured the visa, you will be able to open a broader range of types of bank account in the country.
We referenced above the documents that you will probably require in order to open a corporate bank account in the UAE. As for if you are seeking to open a personal current account or savings account, once you are a resident of the UAE, you can expect to need to supply documents including:
As is the case with a wide range of other aspects of relocating to the UAE and establishing a business in Dubai, our immigration solicitors can assist you with the process of getting together the vital documents for opening a bank account in the country.
Yes, it is perfectly possible to sponsor people who are currently outside of the UAE, to come to the country and work for your Dubai free zone company.
It is a relatively fast and stress-free process to arrange for the employment of people from outside the UAE. Your company offering a particular candidate a job will enable them to secure a UAE residence visa, which is the document that enables foreigners to live in the country for an extended period of time.
UAE residence visas typically last for between two and three years (property investors only), with a relatively simple renewal process enabling them to be continually extended.
Yes, if you are interested in setting up a Dubai free zone company, you can expect to need to provide a comprehensive business plan, providing information on your objectives for the business and financial projections.
At the time of typing, the cheapest free zone in Dubai in which to establish a company was Dubai Media City, or DMC, for which company setup costs can be as low as around AED 7,250 (approximately £1,615 GBP or $1,974 USD).
However, Dubai Media City Free Zone was established in 2001 specifically with a view to helping to transform Dubai into the principal media hub in the region. This, in turn, brings us onto an important point: some UAE free zones are sector specific.
For this, and various other reasons – such as the specific requirements of your business – you will need to think carefully as to which Dubai free zone could be the right choice for you, prioritising a range of factors beyond simply the price of setting up a company in a given free zone.
Yes – one of the biggest attractions of starting a free zone company in Dubai is the opportunity that it presents to you, as a foreign investor, to retain 100% ownership of your business, without the need for a local partner.
Yes – a major reason why free zones were established in the UAE in the first place, was as a means of attracting expatriates and foreign investors to the country.
For this reason, the benefits of opening a Dubai free zone company are ones that are likely to be greatly interesting for you if you are a foreign national from outside the UAE. Those advantages include – but are by no means limited to – the opportunity to enjoy 100% ownership of your company, as well as to repatriate 100% of the profits from the business, only if it is considered as a Qualifying Income.
Yes, as part of our complete service here at Cranbrook Legal, we can arrange for the pickup and drop-off of your documents, as and where they are needed, during the process of setting up your Dubai free zone company.
In addition, we can arrange for a driver to pick up and drop you off at a range of locations for such crucial processes as visa and Emirates ID procedures and medical screening tests. Simply call our team now, on +971 4 286 3944, to find out more about this service.
A foreign national who is seeking to obtain a residence permit for the UAE will need to be certified as medically fit and free of contagious diseases. In order to establish that this is the case for a given visa applicant, they will need to undergo a medical fitness test, carried out at a government-approved health centre in the UAE.
There are various steps involved in the process of being medically tested. Those steps include:
The costs that you will incur in the process of establishing a free zone company in Dubai, will vary depending on the specific free zone and business activity that you choose.
Some free zones in the UAE, for example, require the presentation of minimum paid-up share capital at the time of the free zone company being formed. However, the exact required amount of share capital will depend on the specific free zone that is chosen.
Given that there are free zones dotted around the entire UAE, there is no automatic reason why any given entrepreneur from another country should choose to base their free zone company in Dubai, rather than in another part of the UAE.
However, with Dubai being the UAE’s most populous city, and the country’s free zones largely being concentrated there, it should be no great surprise that so many foreign investors are especially strongly attracted to this metropolis.
The mere fact of so many free zones being situated in such close proximity to each other could present exciting opportunities for you to network with other nearby companies, including those in the same sector as you, as well as those in different sectors. This, in turn, could support your Dubai business’s efforts to survive, thrive, and grow.
Furthermore, many people who relocate to the UAE are particularly attracted to the lifestyle opportunities, entertainment, and infrastructure that Dubai offers. So, as a business owner in Dubai, you are also likely to be able to tap into a strongly skilled and experienced labour force to help grow your company.
The process of setting up a Dubai free zone company can be done relatively quickly – in as soon as seven working days, in fact.
Here at Cranbrook Legal, the extensive knowhow and experience contained within our team allows us to offer such a quick service. We are able to achieve this due to our strong contacts and close work “behind the scenes” to ensure the rapid fulfilment of all the necessary setup stages.
To learn more about our priority service for those who would like to establish a free zone company in Dubai, please feel free to give us a call, on +971 4 286 3944. You are also welcome to complete and fill in our online contact form to arrange a free consultation.
Although it is expected as part of the conditions for establishing a company in the UAE that your company will have some kind of physical facility, your company does not necessarily need to have a traditional office space of its own.
That’s because virtual company licence packages are available in Dubai, whereby your workers can operate on a flexi-desk basis, if this is what you would prefer.
You might do this, for example, if you would prefer to start as small as possible in order to minimise your risk, before gradually building up your company in the conventional way, taking on employees and bigger dedicated offices.
Here at Cranbrook Legal, we can well understand that the various processes involved in setting up a free zone company in Dubai might be intimidating, and you may be unsure where to begin.
For these reasons, you might look to partner with a company – such as ourselves – that possesses in-depth knowhow and experience in relation to all the steps of establishing a business in the UAE.
We maintain strong contacts in the West Asian country, and can guide you through the entire process, from start to finish, including applications for visas for you, your employees, and any family members you may wish to bring with you to the UAE.
To find out more about our comprehensive project-managed service, available for a single pre-agreed fixed fee, please do not hesitate to arrange a free consultation with us, or to call +971 4 286 3944.
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