Duopolis, or the expansion of Warsaw-based BSS companies to Łódź
CBRE and the City of Łódź Office held a business conference in Warsaw which addressed recruitment challenges faced by the Modern Business Services companies on the Warsaw labor market – and pitched the idea of expansion to the city of Łódź.
In their presentation City of Łódź Office emphasized that modern-day Łódź represents an economic ecosystem complementary to that present in Warsaw, while offering conditions and business climate typical for a regional city. Rule of thumb is that difference in remuneration for similar positions can reach between ten and twenty percent. Certain projects may benefit from considering a scenario whereby employing people from Łódź in their home city, instead of recruiting for the Warsaw branches, may yield the best results. Good transport links between the two cities are another significant factor. These will only get better as further developments are scheduled, in connection with the government's plans to build the Solidarity Transport Hub. Railway infrastructure will be the project’s building block over the coming years and will cut the travel time between Łódź and Warsaw to mere 40 minutes.
The Łódź office hub, akin to many office real estate in Warsaw, is very well connected to the train station. Business expansion – the growth of the BSS sector, the inflow of foreign investments, the evolution of the global market (incl. supply chain or the competitiveness of companies operating in Poland), as well as the economic development of Poland – all contribute to a growth in the demand for development planning, business process relocation, and the expansion of activities to new markets, including those in regional cities. The above sets out the current market situation – and the growing significance of Łódź in the business services industry will be one of its outcomes. Positive dynamics of new investments inflow over the past few months as well as new entrants announcing their arrival in Łódź across the coming quarters further reinforce the city’s status. In total, 2022 may bring around 10 new BSS investments.
Jan Banasikowski, Associate Director at CBRE Advisory & Transaction Services: Whenever we engage in talks with foreign investors as well as large organizations planning to grow their operations in new locations across Poland, we like to point their business expansion appetite towards directions and solutions that generate specific and meaningful savings as well as enable safe, long-term development. Benefits center around both the quality and costs of running a business (labor, real estate) but also the cost and quality of life, which are becoming increasingly appealing and help attract employees. In the case of Łódź, its infrastructural, location, and human capital advantages make it a top business expansion and growth destination for foreign companies and, over the next few years, also those from Warsaw and Kraków.
Adam Brzostowski, Director of the Economic Development and International Cooperation Office at the City of Łódź Office: Organizing individual consultations and workshops for companies planning their business processes expansion is one of the elements of the Duopolis project. The substantive value of the project lies in the opportunity to analyze the directions and benefits of planned activities in an interdisciplinary way, utilizing the experience and knowledge of a group of market experts in the areas of HR (Grafton), real estate (CBRE), and investor support (City of Łódź Office).
