Brandix Apparel City to attract Rs 5400 Cr

CM Rosaiah inaugurates the park in AP Special Economic Zone

Andhra Pradesh chief minister K Rosaiah on Monday inaugurated the Brandix India Apparel City (BIAC) located in the Andhra Pradesh Special Economic Zone here.

The state government has allotted 1,000 acres of land for the project while the Centre has provided Rs 36 crore under the Union textile policy.

Speaking on the occasion, Rosaiah asked BIAC, promoted by Sri Lanka-based Brandix group, to fulfil its promise of providing employment to 60,000 people at the earliest.

He said the government was providing training to youth under Rajiv Udhyogsree to make skilled manpower available and had, so far, trained 1 million youth.

BIAC would have 20 apparel manufacturing plants, three fabric mills, eight accessories factories and one finishing plant. The apparel city would attract an investment of $1.2 billion (around Rs 5,400 crore), said Brandix group chief executive officer Ashroff Omar.

While two manufacturing units — Brandix Apparel India and Ocean India (US) — have already commenced exports, four others are at different stages of completion. These six companies, on completion, would cumulatively invest about $70 million (Rs 315 crore) for factory infrastructure development, he said.

Fabric companies like Fountain Set Holdings of Hong Kong,  Pioneer Elastic India Quantum Clothing Indi (UK), DEB Fashion India and Seeds Intimate Apparel India have come forward to set up joint ventures in the BIAC.

Visakhapatnam would attract investments worth about Rs 68,000 crore over the next five years and see 71,000 new jobs being created. During the last three years, Vizag district attracted Rs 17,000 crore in different sectors, said K Lakshmi Narayana, major industries minister.

The Centre has sanctioned six integrated textile parks for Andhra Pradesh, including in Visakhapatnam, said Panabaaka Lakshmi, Union minister of state for textiles, adding this was the biggest textile park in Southeast Asia. “This year, the textile Budget is Rs 4,500 crore. The government has allotted Rs 397 crore to promote the integrated textile parks in the country,” she said.