Packaging goods — does it count as manufacturing, or not?
My company packages and packs products — does that count as qualifying manufacturing in the free zone?
In many cases, yes — activities such as packaging can fall within qualifying industrial activities, as long as they are genuinely linked to a production or processing operation. And contrary to what many assume, the physical trading of "Qualifying Commodities" through a recognised commodities exchange (in raw form) is itself an explicitly listed Qualifying Activity — the exception is speculative trading in financial derivatives that isn't used for hedging risk tied to that same commodity-trading activity, which is what gets treated differently.
What matters is the actual nature of the activity on the ground and where it's carried out, not the company's trade name. At RASEEKH, we classify your actual activities before assuming they qualify or don't.