End of an era as last factory shuts
05/08/2008
The last shirt manufacturer in Coleraine, County Derry, has closed down.
This part of Ireland has been famous for textile production for many decades, but the owners of the last facility in the town to manufacture shirts, RH Houston's, closed its doors for the last time on August 5 after 50 years in business.
Three other factories—Novus Styles, Wright's and the Coleraine Shirt Company— went out of business at the turn of the century. Houston’s struggled on, but has had to admit defeat in the face of competition from lower-cost centres of production in Asia and Africa.
Former chief executive of Marks & Spencer, Luc Vandevelde, said in 2004 that the retail company had kept the UK textile industry “falsely alive on a life-support machine” for years through sourcing shirts and other products from factories in the north of Ireland.
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