Clothing giant Seardel retrenches more workers

30 Apr '10

2 min read

Seardel has started retrenching workers due to the shrinking sales volumes and increasing labour costs. It is retrenching over 800 workers. It had started retrenching workers at its Durban and Cape Town factories in the last month, informed Mr. Stuart Queen, Chief Executive of Seardel.

Seardel's factory at Durban, which is a suit manufacturing facility, witnessed sales volume reduction in the past year. So, the group is retrenching around 150 workers in this facility, he added.

Further he said that a large portion of the factory's customer base are independent retailers, hence the factory never had sufficient volumes. Moreover, as per Mr. Queen, suits are quite out of fashion and the sales volumes of suits are declining.

It would retrench 671 staff members from its Intimate Apparel division formerly known as Cape Underwear, Cygnet and Triumph. Around 335 out of these 671 are contract workers.

After this latest round of retrenchment, only around 10,000 workers will now be working for Seardel from 15,000, two years ago.

About a year ago, the company had closed down its subsidiary Frame Vertical Pipeline at Durban rendering 1,400 people unemployed.

Though the company has just 10,000 workers left with it, it remains the largest clothing and textile employer of the country, informed the Chief Executive of the company and expressed hope that, Seardel will re-acquire the production volumes in future, and re-employ its staff.

Fibre2fashion News Desk - India

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