Rieker expands footprint in Vietnam

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Quang Ngai Industrial Zones Authority last week granted an investment certificate for Rieker Vietnam to build a $14 million, 10-hectare footwear factory at Tinh Phong Industrial Park.

"This is the biggest foreign-invested project to be licenced in Quang Ngai this year. It is expected to contribute to boosting the province's economy when it comes online," said Le Hong Ha, deputy director of the authority.

Once fully completed in 2014, the factory will generate 5,000 direct jobs and 2,500 indirect ones for local people, manufacture eight million pairs of shoes a year, and earn around $15 million in annual export revenue.

Ha said Rieker Vietnam planned to increase its investment capital to $20 million when the first phase was completed.

Rieker Vietnam also built its first shoe factory in the Dien Nam-Dien Ngoc Industrial Zone in Quang Nam province in 2004.

The current $42 million factory is able to turn out some 15 million pairs of shoes a year with 11,000 people for direct work and another 5,000 for indirect work.

The company is now present in 62 countries around the world and is one of the largest shoemakers in the world.

Home to numerous suppliers that provide  services to several prominent brands  both in footwear like Nike, Adidas, Ruma, Reebook and textile and garment like JC Penny, Mango, Itochu, and Express, Vietnam is one of the leading supply centres of competitively priced footwear and textile and garment in the world due to competitive labour cost and stable economic and political environment.

Adidas, the world's second largest sporting-goods maker has just chosen Vietnam as one of three countries alongside Cambodia and Laos which will receive more outsourcing orders in 2011 for its sales expansion plan.

"You will see that in 2011 we will grow again," said the chief executive officer of Adidas Group Herbert Hainer.

Meanwhile, the sub-contractors in Vietnam of the world's largest sporting-goods maker Nike are also boosting their production to adapt the increasing demands from Nike.

The Korean-owned Taekwang Vina company, which provides 7 per cent of total outsourcing volume for Nike, recently opened its third manufacturing factory Vietnam Moc Bai in southern Tay Ninh province to target its plan of providing 13 per cent of Nike's outsourcing volume.