MMF sector taking strength in Egypt: Midani Group

29 Sep '10

4 min read

Egypt, also known as the cradle of civilization, offers investors a favorable, cost-competitive environment due to its abundant, low-cost labor; its infrastructure for supporting new businesses; and its reliable, low-cost electricity, gas and water utilities.

While sourcing hubs China and Bangladesh are busily engaged in fighting out their yen or labor issues respectively, recently published report by the Egyptian Commercial Representation Office in Washington about Egypt's exports of clothing and textiles to USA during the period from January 2010 – May 2010, records that the value of exports in the context of the Qualified Industrial Zones (QIZ) clothing and textiles rose by 7.5 percent and reached $350 million during the fist five months of 2010, from January to May of 2010, compared with $331 million dollars during the same period in 2009.

Besides, less known but its fact to no wonder that international clothing brands such as Hugo Boss, Gap, Ralph Lauren and Guess manufacture their labels in Africa, particularly in Egypt.

However, the textile and garment industry has several requirements to be fulfilled on to be a level playing country in select sector. One of the major issues that the country is jostling through is its feedstock requirement in MMF industry. Attuning on the same note Board Member of Midani Group of Companies- a well known Egyptian player in dope dyed PFY and knitted garments, Mr Mohamed Midani discussed the textile scenario of Egypt at length with Fibre2fashion's NEWS team. He stated – “Egypt is an evolving country, so far we have achieved very promising scales in fields of industry and economics. We have a lot of good points that encourage us to improve and compete like electricity cost, labor cost, export funding. Yet one of our major problems in our industry is not having our main raw materials PET Chips produced in Egypt in enough scale, so we have to export it from outside which eventually decreases our competitive abilities a bit”

Nevertheless, not being unappreciative, Mr Midani further acknowledged that the sector seems promising as gradually producers for these feedstock items are joining the sector. Though these producers are not offering entire variety in MMF fibres, still to his satisfaction and purpose fulfilling, they do provide PET Chips.

Providing us his view on PFY trends across poles, he specified that the PFY movement can be well described as 'globalized'. He annotated – “it is growing fast and in great pace. It is required to meet the demands of many different yarn industries and many different tastes as PFY has this very special characteristic of being able to change according to different cultures. Tastes, specifications and colors differ from one country to another and we have to satisfy all needs and fulfill all requirements.”

In our colloquy thereon, the tycoon also threw light on knitwear sector. He narrated- “fabrics are firmly bonded with fashion industry, and fashion is an industry that changes regularly and very frequent in order to match a very quick change of tastes in all sectors of societies be it kids, teenagers or adults. Also the industrial revolution in machinery keeps giving birth to new techniques in fabric designs and printing designs that helps a lot in opening new markets and sort of giving new blood to the over all industry.”

Fibre2fashion News Desk - India

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