Greenfield footwear plant in Tamil Nadu

Chennai, Oct 14 (UNI) The Mauritius-based footwear major Pavers Foresight Smart Ventures today announced a JV with Flyflot Lones S.P.A of Italy to set up a Greenfield plant in Tamil Nadu to produce one million pairs in the first phase.

The JV was a 50:50 partnership with both partners contributing an initial investment of three Million US dollars to set up the plant to produce one million pairs.

The production would be scaled up to three million pairs by 2012.

The location of the Greenfield plant was under finalisation and the commercial production would begin by mid-2009. This would boost India's share of value added exports significantly as 80 per cent of the production would be exported.

Fly Flot is the largest footwear manufacturer in Europe, with presence in 57 countries, and produces in excess of 7.2 Million pairs of footwear annually.

Mr Utsav Seth, CEO, Pavers Foresight Smart Ventures said while India has matured in independent areas of footwear making, from raw material to components, there was a big opportunity waiting in value added goods and the country was poised to take a significant pie of the global production in the next three to five years.

On the consumption side, India was increasingly becoming a destination for premium international products.

''The Pavers England brand introduced in April this year has found considerable foothold in the premium footwear segment and we hope we will do the same with Flyflot in the comfort segment'', he said, adding the company was planning to bring in three more international brands by 2009 to cater to this demand.

Mr Bruno Maccari, Director, International Business, Flyflot said this JV was a significant move as this was for the first time Flyflot was expanding production facility outside Europe.

Though Vietnam and China were serious contenders, India had made the cut finally, he added.

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