The factories make prints and labels for textile manufacturers and exporters respectively
Be Connected Industries, a multi-national Belgian–Dutch company, has officially inaugurated a garment printing and a labeling factory at an investment of 2.5 million dollars on June 18, 2015 at the Eastern Industrial Zone.
The company has similar establishments in Hong Kong, Shanghai and Bangladesh.
Both the printing and labeling factories have been established on a 7,000sqm space that Be Connected has rented at the Eastern Industrial Zone. The factory can manufacture 80,000 pieces of garment prints and one million labels a day.
The company is targeting local textile manufacturers for the printing business, and the export market for the labeling. The company is already receiving orders from textile companies, according to General Manager, Martün van der Erue.
Be Connected received its license on February 14, 2015 and currently has 400 employees.
“With the growing number of local textile factories, the demand for printing and labeling industries is also growing,” van der Erue told Fortune.
The new factory, as one input to the textile sector, will save foreign currency and save the time consumed in printing and labeling abroad, Mebrahtu Melese, state minister for Industry, who was present at the inauguration ceremony of the factories, said.
Chief Executive Officer of Bahir Dar Textile Factory, Abay Melaku, who was not aware of the opening of the new factory, expressed the view that if the new company met their standard, it could save them the labor and cost of importing from India.
“Since November, we have incurred a cost of four million Birr,” Abay said.
Currently, in Ethiopia, there are 130 textile and garment medium and large scale factories. However, their demand for printing and labeling has not been assessed so far, Bantihun Gessese, Ethiopian Textile Industry Development Institute corporate communication director, told Fortune.
In the past five years 37 textile manufacturers had joined the industry. The government had planned to collect revenue of one billion dollars during the GTP I period. However, GTP I is ending with the far lower attainment of 380 million dollars.
[AddisFortune]