Chinese moves from ECCO
International footwear group ECCO has applied for permission to build a tannery in China. As part of the process, the company has already invited a delegation from Xiamen in South East China to visit its tanneries in Thailand and Holland. ECCO says the specialists were especially impressed with the environmental aspects of those operations.
ECCO has also obtained permission from the Chinese authorities to build a shoe factory in Xiamen. The company said the decision followed 12 months of investigations and negotiations.
The factory will be built in stages over a period of 5 years, with the building activities for stage one commencing August 2004. The first production hall including service facilities will become ready in March 2005 with production start-up scheduled for April 2005.
This first unit will have a capacity of one million pairs of shoes, ECCO says, and those that follow will be exact replicas of this first. The idea is that each unit is a fully independent, fully integrated mini-factory. Each mini-factory houses the entire process from leather cutting to finished product, maximising efficiency levels.
The construction of unit two will start when the first unit has been built and production commenced. Production volume in 2005, 2006 and 2007 will mainly correspond to the expected growth in ECCO’s sales while the new factory will incorporate all of ECCO’s experience gained from our other production operations. Group Technical Adviser Flemming Brønd is heading up the project supported by a team of Danish, Chinese and international employees and advisers.
An HQ steering committee with President Dieter Kasprzak as chairman is monitoring the project. Production from the first factory will be exported from China to ECCO’s international markets. This is also the intention as regards factory unit No 2. Then it is planned to build a third unit to service the growing Chinese home market while exporting part of the production.
