Kanoria Africa Textile Plc, established by Indian owners, began yarn production last week in preparation for the planned commencement of denim fabric manufacturing in May 2015 at its plant in Bishoftu (Debre Zeit) in Oromia.
The company obtained on investment license two years ago and built its factory on a 155,000sqm plot in Bishoftu with installed capacity of 10 million metres of fabric peryear. The factory, which Jay Soyanter, Marketing Vice President of the company, says will employ 600 people,and will produce both yarn and denim for textile and garment factories. It is the factory established with a capital of 35 million dollars.
The factory will sell its products in Ethiopia as well as export to African, Asian and South American markets, says Soyanter. Kanoria will use cotton procured from the local market and imported from Indian and Pakistan.
“There is a big potential for the investment of garment and our company wanted to meet the denim fabric demand of the country, which were mainly imported from Pakistan, Bangladesh, Turkey and Sri Lanka,” said Soyanter.
The company is looking forward to the commencement of operation over the next four to five months of the five textile factories, among those are A.N.F Garment Factory, established by Pakistani owners and Atraco Textile Factory, both located at the new Bole Lemi textile zone in Addis Abeba.
In Ethiopia, there are 130 medium and large-scale textile and garment factories, of which 37 are owned by foreign investors while the remaining are owned by domestic investors.
From the foreign textile factories, Ayka Addis, established with a capital of 140 million dollars by Turkish owners, has the largest production capacity with 20tns of yarn and 40tn or 70,000 pieces of garment a day. Ayka Addis employs 10,000 people.
The second largest textile factory, Almeda Textile Plc, established in February 1996 by the Endowment Fund for the Rehabilitation of Tigray (EFFORT), with a capital of 594 million dollar, employs 2,500 people. It has a yearly production capacity of 7,020tn of yarn, 16,751,100tn of grey fabric, 15,387,000tn of processed fabric, and about one million pieces of basic shirt equivalent garments, says its owner, EFFORT.
Another garment and textile factory , MAA garment and textile factory, owned privately by Kebire enterprises under Midrok Ethiopia Plc, has a production capacity of 10 tones of spun fiber per day and 6,000 kilogram of dyed products perday. MAA garment was established in June 2004 and has 1,300 employees.
“The new denim factory is beneficial in terms of transferring technology advancements and knowledge to the country, saving foreign currency, meeting the high demand for denim fabric and creating employment opportunities,” said Bantihun Gesese, Ethiopian Textile Industry Development Institute Corporate communication Director.
Ethiopia’s textile and garment sector has been a poor performer over the past years, with one of the major problems being the poor supply of cotton, and others being poor planning and management, according to earlier government reports.
In 2013/14 Ethiopia made 111.3 million Br from the export of textiles and garment, which showed an improvement of 12.5pc over the previous year, although it was just 31.8pc of the target of 350 million dollars. Bantihun says that the 14 million dollars earned from export during the month of January 2015 was a result of the increased attention from the government.
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