Interloop Limited, one of Pakistan’s largest hosiery manufacturers, is to invest more than $100 mn to expand its circular knitting capacity. The investment will see the construction of a vertically integrated, hi-tech apparel manufacturing plant in Faisalabad with a production capacity of 50 tonnes of knitted fabric per day, producing over 3 mn garments per month. The company is also planning to set up a new hosiery facility, Hosiery Plant VI, which should be operational by the 2023-24 fiscal year.
Interloop was founded in the early 1990s by Musadaq Zulqarnain, Chairman, and his brother, CEO Navid Fazil. It runs its own in-house spinning, yarn dyeing, knitting and finishing facilities, operating more than 4,000 Lonati knitting machines and 46,704 ring-spinning spindles and employing around 16,000 people. The company’s also operates a production facility in Bangladesh.
It ranks as the Pakistan’s seventh largest exporter and generates approximately 90 percent of its revenue through exports supplying yarns, hosiery and apparel to some of the world’s leading brands including Nike, Puma, Reebok, H&M and Levi’s.
For its most recent results, third quarter, revenues were up 70 percent to PKR 21.25 bn, up from PKR 12.50 bn for the corresponding period last year. Gross profit grew by 48 percent to PKR 5.54 bn while net profit was up 34 percent to reach PKR 2.27 bn compared to PKR 1.69 bn. It currently produces around 795 mn pairs of socks with this figure expected to grown significantly once the new mill is completed.
Interloop is also planning to ramp up its in-house textile production to 5.5 tonnes per day which includes filament yarn dyeing capacity of 2.0 tonnes per day and 3.1 tonnes per day of elastomeric yarns.