Geog

Johnson and Johnson is an american M.N.C which operates in 54 countries and is made up of 200 companies worldwide. one such company is vistakon, which is the largest producer of disposable contact lenses in the world. its headquarters is in Florida and it has a state of the art facility based in the national technology park in limerick. two factors that would have influenced the setting up of this plant are: workforce and transport/infrastructure. Workforce: vistakon currently employs over 500 employees in its limerick plant. one such reason they chose Ireland is because of its young English speaking workforce. migration from eastern Europe has also added skilled workers to the labour pool whose language skills are in demand for trading within the EU. by 2013 it is hoped there will be twice the number of postgraduate students with, 1000 phds every year especially in humanities and the social sciences. according to the 2007 world competitiveness report Ireland has one of the best education systems in the world, with 1 million people in full time education. Ireland produce over 35000 graduates every year and since 1992 there has been a 35% increase in 3rd level students studying engineering or technology courses. the limerick area has a population of nearly 100,000 people so a workforce can be provided locally. transport and infrastructure; the main body of vistakon lenses is a gel like substance imported by lorry to limerick. vital to the journey therefore are good roads, and limerick is a focal point for the n7 to Dublin, the n20 to cork which both bypass the city. it has a rail network which also connects it to these two cities. also a now complected Shannon tunnel which links both the northern and southern banks of the river,easing the city traffic and improving access to its hinterland. its close proximity to Shannon international airport is an advantage especially for executive travel. this allows easy and direct travel to both the EU and the us. the development of U.L and L.I.T has catered for the educational advantages mentioned. this combined with Ireland's tax rate of 12.5% made Ireland an attractive location for vistakon.