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Retailers and labour found common ground and agreed to support applications for additional clothing import quota’s by Woolworths, Pepkor, Foschini and Adidas, clothing union boss Ebrahim Patel said on Friday.

May 2, 2007

By Ronnie Morris

Cape Town – Retailers and labour found common ground and agreed to support applications for additional clothing import quota’s by Woolworths, Pepkor, Foschini and Adidas, clothing union boss Ebrahim Patel said on Friday.

Patel, the general secretary of the Southern African Clothing and Textile Workers’ Union, said the two-year quota on the import of 31 clothing and fabric items could give the clothing industry space to reorganise.

There was a growing consensus that the industry had to reinvent itself. Factories needed to be modernised and companies needed to invest heavily in smart work and skilled workers, improve quality and quick response.

Patel said that after the quota regulations were published last year, a few retailers approached labour and the government with a request for additional quotas in babywear and on a particular type of fabric not easily available locally.

As part of the agreement, Pepkor committed to bring back its men’s briefs production to South Africa and formed a partnership with Gregory Knitting Mills in Johannesburg to provide the fabric.

Woolworths committed to maintain and expand its level of local babywear procurement, Foscini would partner a number of small and medium-sized companies and bring back 33 percent of knitwear units that had been sourced off-shore, and Adidas undertook to increase local sourcing.