Apparel Online India Magazine January 1st Issue 2019 | Page 16

HOT TOPICS
ROUNDUP
2018
SUBJECTS IN DEBATE
TEAM AO HIGHLIGHTS SOME CHALLENGING ISSUES OF THE INDUSTRY
As our cover story on industry’s core issue, Team Apparel Online discussed a lot of issues in 2018 and tried to give a direction on how industry
is moving forward… How various hubs are performing…; what can be the new markets; or where to focus more to get extra business… How
women in apparel industry are making a balance between their professional and personal life, to mention some.
GOING ABROAD… WHY?
Many apparel manufacturers are investing overseas and that too in countries like Ethiopia, Sri Lanka, Indonesia and Jordan. Apparel
Online explored what is attracting them to do so and what is their strategy behind expanding overseas.
December 1-15
October 16-31
Gautam Nair, MD, Matrix Clothing
“We invested US $ 6 million in Jordan to take over the running facilities
of IBG (Indo-British Garments). There are three strategic advantages of
manufacturing garments in Jordan, but the most important is that it is a
duty-free country for North America and Canada, which have a very big
competitive edge today. Recently, the country has also gained some duty-
free concessions for Europe, based on certain conditions they satisfied…
When we talk about chief value synthetic fabric or garments made by CVS
fabric, duty in India is between 27 to 32 per cent...”
Lalit Gulati, MD, Modelama Exports, Gurgaon
“Recently we expanded our overseas operations by adding 400 machines in
Tanjung Emas, Semarang, a port city on the north coast of Java, Indonesia.
We had entered Indonesia almost five years ago and had 450 machines
there. By having a unit in Indonesia, we can compete with Bangladesh and
other similar competitors because productivity is quite higher in Indonesia.
We want to grow there as we can’t do volume-based business in India, as it
is too expensive. So, we have to have a base in a place like Indonesia where
the price advantage is clear, as we don’t want to lose any of our customers.”
R Rajkumar, MD, Best Corporation (P) Ltd.
“Ethiopia provides the entire infrastructure with plug and play facilities. The labour is cheap
here, and significantly, Ethiopia enjoys duty-free export access to both Europe and the US –
the two major markets for garments. As of now in Ethiopia, we have worker strength of 1,000
and the same could be scaled up to 4,000 in future.’’
16 Apparel Online India | JANUARY 1-15, 2019 | www.apparelresources.com
Continuously growing:
First Steps Babywear
expands now to Sri Lanka
“We chose Sri Lanka as our next
manufacturing base mainly to get the
duty drawback benefit, as Sri Lanka is
offering 10 per cent duty drawback; this
will help us to be competitive. In the
initial stage, the target is to produce 0.5
million pieces per month in Sri Lanka,
while within a year, it will be more than
double as our target is to manufacture
12 million pieces per annum… Though
Sri Lanka is somewhere 15 to 20 per
cent more expensive than India due to
higher labour cost, quality rejection is
comparatively less in Sri Lanka as they
boost more skilled operators in the
country. This is also one of the main
advantages of setting up unit in Sri
Lanka.” – Richard D’ Souza, Director of
Projects and CMD, First Steps Babywear