Companies operating in National Industries Park (NIP) will face a service blackout from 28 November as the free-zone migrates to a new Customer Relationship Management (CRM) and Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) platform hosted on the Dubai Trade Portal. The upgrade, announced yesterday, promises fully digital employment-visa processing, e-signature of contracts via DocuSign and instant PDF employee ID cards.
During the switchover, visa arrival-intimation tools and certain payment functions will be unavailable. Firms have been told to submit any draft service requests (SRs) before 28 November and to preload sufficient portal credit to avoid delays. Resident-permit renewals initiated under the old system must email medical reports to NIP for migration to the new platform.
![Dubai’s National Industries Park to digitise all visa and HR services on 29 November]()
The overhaul aligns the free-zone’s licensing nomenclature with Dubai’s Department of Economy & Tourism and is part of a wider push to integrate Jebel Ali Free Zone, Dubai Auto Zone and Textile City onto a unified backend. Once live, HR and PRO teams will be able to track visa status in real time, cut courier runs for ID cards, and complete lease renewals in a single dashboard.
For mobility managers the upgrade is largely positive—cycle times for employment visas are expected to fall below five working days—but a short-term crunch is likely as the portal stabilises. Companies should plan onboarding timelines accordingly, warn new hires of potential delays and budget extra lead-time for critical assignments around the go-live weekend.
Failure to adapt could leave expatriate staff stranded without valid IDs or gate-pass access to the logistics-heavy industrial zone, jeopardising supply-chain continuity.
During the switchover, visa arrival-intimation tools and certain payment functions will be unavailable. Firms have been told to submit any draft service requests (SRs) before 28 November and to preload sufficient portal credit to avoid delays. Resident-permit renewals initiated under the old system must email medical reports to NIP for migration to the new platform.
The overhaul aligns the free-zone’s licensing nomenclature with Dubai’s Department of Economy & Tourism and is part of a wider push to integrate Jebel Ali Free Zone, Dubai Auto Zone and Textile City onto a unified backend. Once live, HR and PRO teams will be able to track visa status in real time, cut courier runs for ID cards, and complete lease renewals in a single dashboard.
For mobility managers the upgrade is largely positive—cycle times for employment visas are expected to fall below five working days—but a short-term crunch is likely as the portal stabilises. Companies should plan onboarding timelines accordingly, warn new hires of potential delays and budget extra lead-time for critical assignments around the go-live weekend.
Failure to adapt could leave expatriate staff stranded without valid IDs or gate-pass access to the logistics-heavy industrial zone, jeopardising supply-chain continuity.
