Archer Clothing increases workforce

Archer Clothing increases workforce
Published: 22 May 2018
BULAWAYO-based clothing firm, Archer Clothing, has increased its workforce by 66,6 percent to 1 000 workers from 600 last year on the back of improved production.

Managing director, Mr Jeremy Youmans, told Business Chronicle in an interview that his company was targeting to further increase its workforce by an additional 600 workers this year.

"Currently, we are sitting at 1 000 workers and we are now targeting an additional 600 workers once we secure new machinery as we expand our operations and set up a training school at Archer," he said.

"But the major constraint we are facing at the moment is foreign currency shortages to import new machinery."

The company requires at least $5 million working capital including $1 million for acquisition of new machinery in the long term.

After Archer Clothing creditors approved the company's take-over by Harare-based Paramount Garments in 2015, saving it from liquidation, the firm had projected to employ 850 workers by year 2016.

In 2016, it was forced to retrench 400 of its workers and was further forced to reduce its working days from five to four a week as its business fortunes continued to slide due to a drop in local orders and export competitiveness, which had constrained its ability to grow export orders.

When Paramount Garments acquired Archer, the Bulawayo firm owed creditors about $14 million.

"We have paid the secured creditors half of the amount Archer owed before we took over. And we are now working on setting up a training school at Archer so that we train and employ more skilled people," said Mr Youmans.

The firm also hopes that the designation of Bulawayo as a Special Economic Zone would go a long way towards improving the competitiveness of its products on the export markets as well as attracting foreign direct investment into the country.

Archer does exports into the region, Sudan, Kenya as well as Germany. It also plans to explore other markets across the world.

The company is also among the local exporters enjoying the export incentive scheme introduced by the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe.

The export incentive scheme started at five percent rate but has since been raised to 12 percent for top exporters premised on encouraging Zimbabwe companies to increase exports and generate the much-needed foreign currency.

In the first four months of the year, the country's exports improved by 46 percent to $329,6 million compared to $225,6 million during the same period last year.

The improved export performance has largely been attributed to a number of measures the Government and RBZ have put in place to boost domestic output in order to reduce the trade imbalance.

In 2017, the country reduced the trade deficit by 25 percent to $1,5 billion and this year Government targets to reduce it further to less than $1 billion.
- zimpapers
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