The Coega Industrial Development Zone (IDZ) has signed its first investor, when a Belgian-owned high-end niche textile company has signed a 20-year lease agreement with Coega for an investment to the tune of R200 million. Work on the plant is already well-advanced, which is proof that Coega is indeed ready to “plug and play”.
The Coega IDZ is situated 20 km east of the city of Port Elizabeth on the south-eastern coast of South Africa, adjacent to a new deepwater port on the Coega River. The IDZ forms part of the Nelson Mandela Metropolitan Municipality.
Four years after ditching the strategy of seeking to attract an “anchor tenant” for the Coega IDZ, the Coega Development Corp. has been vindicated in opting to secure a basket of investments in various sectors of industries with different financial values.
Sander International Textiles, owned by Belgian investors, Alex Liessens and Dominique Glorian, will occupy about 10 of the total 40 hectares allocated for the textile cluster in Zone 3 of the Coega Industrial Development Zone (IDZ).
While the rest of the South African textile industry is teetering on the brink of extinction, the Sander International’s South African operation, Sander International RSA (SIRSA), will produce a specialised high end niche product, Fire Retardant Fabrics, for the automotive and transport industries including Ocean Liners, Aircraft, as well as cater for the interior décor in the hospitality industry. The product is the latest fabric trend in the market.
With regards to the infrastructure, an access road to the SIRSA site is already in place and the process is at the stage of constructing the necessary infrastructure to enable the building of the plant. Front-end civil work commenced at the end of April.
Phase 1 of the project will include the construction of a Weaving Mill to the Textile Industry specifications, complete with positive pressure lint extraction process and a finishing facility. Construction will be undertaken by a private consulting group, with a combined CDC and SIRSA team taking responsibility for project supervision.
The first phase of the project will be completed in November and SIRSA has already secured supply orders for the first fabric that will be produced from the Coega IDZ operation. This requires that everything moves at very strict time-frames. Phase 2 will come on stream in the middle of 2006 with facilities for the Dyeing and Yarn Production processes. Phase 3 will get underway by the end of 2006.
SIRSA has a product and skills development plan in place, which they will commence with when the Dyeing Plant, the Extrusion Plant and an Academy come on stream with the second phase construction in 2006.
One of the reasons for choosing the Coega IDZ, besides the high levels of customer service and professionalism SIRSA received, was the strategic position of the IDZ to global markets. The textile plant will be well-positioned for importing and exporting. Raw materials will be imported from the Sander International Mill in Belgium for an estimated period of 12 to 18 months, after which they will be manufactured by SIRSA locally.
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