Hanesbrands opens new factory in El Salvador
19/02/2009
US-based clothing manufacturer Hanesbrands has opened a new factory in El Salvador in which it will produce sports clothing.
The new operation will run under the name of El Salvador Sew, in the town of San Juan Opico in the department of La Libertad. Hansebrands is reported by local media to have invested between $8 million and $10 million in the factory, which will have the capacity to produce around 250,000 items of clothing (mostly jogging pants and knitted tops) immediately, but in the short term the company hopes to triple that figure.
This is the sixth facility Hansebrands has set up in El Salvador. One of the operations it runs there is a textile mill, which at the moment produces almost 700,000 kilos of fabric each week. The company's intention is to increase this capacity to nearly 1 million kilos a week.
Juan Zepeda, a specialist textile industry consultant working on the project for El Salvador's inward investment agency, Proesa, said at the opening of the new plant: "This is why Hansebrands needed to increase its garment construction capacity. Making new investments in times of crisis is very difficult, but Hansebrands has decided to stick to its expansion plan.
The country's vice-president, Ana Vilma de Escobar, said the new investment had "filled the whole of El Salvador with optimism".
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