After months of running on a skeleton crew, the Cape Town clothing factory owned by listed manufacturer Rex Trueform officially reopened on Wednesday under a new five-year lease agreement with House of Monatic, a wholly owned subsidiary of black economic empowerment group Brimstone Investment Corporation.
In a statement on Wednesday, House of Monatic said it has kept its earlier pledge to the South Africa Clothing and Textile Workers’ Union (Sactwu), initially rehiring 175 workers of the 970 who were retrenched in June 2005 when the embattled manufacturer closed shop. Monatic has appointed 50 of these skilled workers from Rex Trueform at its own premises nearby.
Monatic chairperson Fred Robertson said the redeployment of the tailored clothing manufacturer has been supported by a number of major retailers, but that “more support was still needed”.
“We are on track with our aim of having 250 floor staff by the end of the first quarter, but we can’t do it without a strong order book, and that means buy-in from the large clothing merchants,” he noted.
Robertson is confident Monatic can emulate the success it has enjoyed in the turnaround of the Novell jeans factory in Atlantis, which increased its staff complement to 300 from an initial base of 25 within nine months.
“Keeping the work force small initially will help support job sustainability,” added Monatic MD Brian Buckingham. “We will get the factory operating efficiently and we will gear up the lines, but we are doing it systematically to ensure job security.”
He believes there is till a lot of uncertainty in the local clothing-manufacturing sector, related to export incentives designed to offset higher local input costs.
“Combined with currency strength, it’s put paid to discussions with our US [United States] customers,” he noted.
He is optimistic, however, that the Customised Sector Programme (CSP), currently being finalised by the Department of Trade and Industry with input from the clothing and textile industries together with labour, will benefit companies such as Monatic and Trueform.
Ebrahim Patel, Sactwu’s general secretary, commented: “South Africa is able to compete globally in the production of value-added garments such as those manufactured by Rex Trueform.
“Therefore, it is important that production at Rex continues. The company will now be able to benefit from the CSP — the sector development strategy aimed at increasing the manufacture of value-added products and assisting the industry to recapture domestic market share.”
Patel drew attention to the loss of 22 000 jobs in the sector in 2005. He sees the restarting of manufacturing at Rex as a small positive step in an industry faced with major challenges. — I-Net Bridge