H&M and Swedfund have joined hands to contribute to the development of a responsible Ethiopian textile industry characterised by both high social and environmental standards. The partnership is said to start this autumn.
H&M Hennes & Mauritz AB, a Swedish multinational retail-clothing company, is considering to produce clothing in Ethiopia.
H&M mainly relies on Bangladesh for clothes production. One supplier says H&M is looking to source one million garments a month from Ethiopia, according to the report of Wall Street Journal.
A spokeswoman said H&M has placed trial orders with Ethiopian suppliers and that large-scale production is expected to begin as early as this fall.
"As a growing global company we have to look at how we guarantee that we have the capacity to deliver products to all our stores where we have a rapid pace of expansion," H&M spokeswoman Camilla Emilsson-Falk said. "We are doing that by increasing production in our existing production areas and also by looking at new ones."
The Ethiopian government has said it wants to revitalize its textile and garment industry, and has set a target of $1 billion in textile exports by 2016.
"Ethiopia not only gives infrastructure support but financial support," said Rajeev Arora, executive director of the African Cotton and Textiles Industries Federation. He cited competitive interest rates, cheap land and labor, and tax breaks from the government as key incentives leading to extraordinary rates of foreign investment over the past five years.
Ethiopia's textile and apparel exports totaled about $99 million for the 12 months ended in June, up 17% from the prior year, according to Fassil Tadesse, president of the Ethiopian Textile and Garment Manufacturers Association.
Source: The Wall Street Journal
Press release
The Minister of Water, Irrigation and Energy Ethiopia is to attend the annual investment meeting Powering Africa: Ethiopia, taking place from 20-21st November in Addis Ababa.
Construction work for the 500 thousand hectoliter beer producing plant owned by Ethiopian brewer Habesha Breweries SC is under way. The plant is to be constructed according to a turnkey contract agreement between the brewer and Chinese contractor Lehui.
It is expected that construction of the plant will be concluded within fifteen months according to the arrangement reached between the parties. Major shareholder Bavaria N.V, the Dutch company with 39 percent of the shares of Habesha handled most of the negotiations with the contractor to ensure that the first bottles of beer will reach both the local and international markets within the next fifteen months.Habesha Brewery is offering additional 300,000 shares to its existing shareholders after failing to get adequate bank credit.
Habesha has plant to install a brewing plant with annual capacity of 500,000 hectoliters in Debre Berhan Town, 120 KM outside of the capital, Addis Ababa.
