Taiwan’s Everest Textile Co which makes both circular knitted fabrics and garments has announced it will open two new plants in Ethiopia and in the USA, according to a report in the Taipei Times yesterday.

The plant in Ethiopia is to manufacture garments for the company’s European brand customers, while the US facility will supply knitted fabrics and garments to customers in the US.

The two new factories are expected to increase the sales contribution from garments, which currently generate less than 2% of the company’s total sales, an Everest official told the Taipei Times.

Revenue from woven and knitted fabrics accounts for more than 80% of the company’s total sales, while textured yarns generate nearly 10 %, company data shows.

The official, who declined to be named, said the company plans to build another plant in Haiti because of lower labour costs. “We have to keep seeking overseas sites for new factories, as the fabric manufacturing process is quite labour-intensive,” he told the Taipei Times. Everest also operates three plants in Taiwan, China and Thailand.

Everest’s local peers, including Lealea Enterprise Co and Eclat Textile Co, also plan to accelerate overseas capacity expansion plans this year, the report said.

Lealea, which mainly produces textured polyester yarn, has approved a plan to invest as much as US$50 million in its first overseas factory in Indonesia. The new plant is scheduled to begin operations in the first half of this year, with a target capacity of 4 million yards of polyester yarn per year, Lealea spokesman Chen Han-ching told the Taipei Times yesterday.

The plant is to distribute about half of its products to customers in Indonesia, a nation of 255 million people, Chen said. Lealea is also considering building another plant in Vietnam because of lower tariffs on exports to the EU, he added.

According to the report, local media reported that Eclat plans to expand production capacity in Vietnam after dissolving its wholly owned clothing plants in China last month. Two new plants in Vietnam are scheduled to begin operations in the first and third quarters of this year respectively, and are expected to manufacture about 950,000 articles of clothing per month, boosting Eclat’s capacity by 20% annually, local media reported.

Source: The Taipei Times