Kwara State Government has said it is now positioned to capture at least 2% of the global garment market when the newly built factory with daily production of 10,000 garments starts textile productions next year.
The garment factory, which is said to be the largest in West Africa, is one of the many initiatives of Governor Abdulrahman Abdulrazaq to drive socio-economic growth in the State.
Bola Olukoju, Commissioner for Communications, in a statement qouted Olubukola Kifayat Adedeji, managing director of the State’s garment factory as saying, “there is a huge gap for ready-to-wear garments. Most Nigerians depend on imported goods. It is disheartening that we have a lot of creative talents in Nigeria, but they do not have the opportunity to mass produce. This is one of the gaps we intend to fill.
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“Here, we redefine garment production in Nigeria and West African as a whole. We will be involved in designing and manufacturing of ready-to-wear garments for local, international brands and corporate organisations.
“The global garment factory is largely dominated by the Asian countries, particularly China that has 31.3% of total market. But Africa has 6.7% of the market share and Nigeria has 2.7%. With this garment factory, we will command at least 2% of the market.”
Adedeji, explained that the factory has some of the most sophisticated machines used in ready-to-wear garment production, including the Oshima automatic fabric cutting machine, which she said, is the first of its kind to be commissioned in West Africa at the moment.
She noted the production of garments would begin from the first quarter of 2024 as the factory is currently hiring its first set of workers, adding that she was mpressed by the quality of talents who had shown up since the exercise began.
“We are at the recruitment stage. We have all our equipment in place. All the machines have been tested. We have recruited supervisors. We are going to the next phase of recruitment, which will be recruiting the production workers. At this stage, we intend to employ 300 workers at the moment and at full capacity, we intend to employ 4,000 workers.
“This is a much bigger one, compared to anyone that existed before. For the people of Kwara State, the coming of this factory means more revenue will be internally generated. It will open up the economy of the state along different value chains. When we start, there will be a boost in all sectors of the state economy from transportation to and fro within the town, catering services, supply of raw materials, and the likes. It is a boost to the state economy. And when we start exportation, it will be a source of foreign exchange revenue for the state.
“Backward integration is part of the future plan. Our technical partners will be with us for some months, and they are providing raw materials. But eventually, we intend to back integrate and source for our raw materials locally. Part of what we are looking at is setting up a farm to produce our cotton so that prices of our products will be more competitive in the global market at any time. Once we have stable competitive prices, we are sure that we will be available for all markets.
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“We have set up a department for high quality control. There is a place to stack finished products. The products will not be allowed to leave this factory if they have not met the standard we put in place. So, at any point in time, quality control officers will be trained and rotated continuously so that our high standards are maintained,” she said.
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