A Middle East based textile company, Velocity Apparel Plc, established its presence in Ethiopia by set up an integrated garment factory on 101,283 square meters of land in Mekelle, Tigray with an investment of USD 25.9 million is now all set to commence textile production in its plant by the end of October 2015.

The company is instating machineries imported from Germany and Italy, as per information obtained from Ethiopian Textile Development Institute.

The factory will be producing jeans, knit garments, poly-bags and cartons. The factory has the capacity to produce 26,300 pieces of jeans, 200kg of knitted garments, 100,000 pieces of poly-bag and 60,000 cartons per year. 95 percent of its products will be exported to the US and Europe, according to Raghav Pattar, Vice President of the company.

Velocity, which has factories in Egypt and Dubai, has been producing knit and denim garments for the last 34 years.

The company has borrowed 70 percent of the capital from the Development Bank of Ethiopia. Their factory is the 131 textile factory in Ethiopia, said Pattar

According to Bantihun Gessese, Ethiopian Textile Industry Development Institute’s Corporate Communications Director, the factory is going to create job opportunities for 5,000 workers including 800 foreign workers up on full capacity.