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Business View Magazine
North American Assemblies Ltd.
Caribbean company makes key components for the world’s cable TV industry
Arcom Labs is a 35 year-old company, based in Syra-
cuse, NY. It produces a wide range of products for the
worldwide cable industry. In 1993, the directors of the
company were looking for a lower cost alternative for
the production of some of its hardware and so they
scouted a number of islands in the Caribbean, includ-
ing St. Lucia and St. Kitts, as well as some other loca-
tions in Latin America.
They finally settled on St. Lucia for a number of rea-
sons: the island was in the same time zone as com-
pany headquarters; it had an adequate infrastructure;
and, perhaps most importantly, the St. Lucia govern-
ment, in order to attract business to the island, offered
a generous corporate tax holiday - for the first fifteen
years, a company would pay no income taxes at all,
and afterward would pay at a very low rate (maximum
of 8 percent) that could even be further reduced (up
to 2 percent) by employing a certain quota of island
employees.
The new company they formed was called North Amer-
