SUMEC Corporation in China explores sourcing opportunities in SL

A team from SUMEC Corporation in China branded as one of the 500 prestigious Fortune companies in the world was in Sri Lanka with the objective of meeting SME apparel companies in order to see the possibility of sourcing from Sri Lanka.

SUMEC Group Corporation (SUMEC), established in 1978, is a key member of China National Machinery Industry Corporation (SINOMACH), a world top-500 enterprise. Growing up in the process of reform and opening-up of China and global economic integration and through over 30 years of development, SUMEC has become a modern manufacturing service group focusing on three fields of trade and service, engineering contracting, and investment and development.  

In trade and service , the company is engaged in import and export of the bulk commodities including gardening instruments, electric tools, high pressure washer, power generation equipment, garment, household textiles, automobile parts, medical devices, electromechanical equipment, steel, mineral products and coal, domestic trade, self-owned brand, integrated solutions and financial service; engineering contracting includes environmental engineering, energy engineering and marine engineering; investment development includes strategic investment, industrial investment, project investment and financial investment.

SUMEC is among the top 20 textile and apparel exporting companies in China on which SUMEC Textile & Light Industry Co., Ltd. was ranked 7th among top 100 of ninety-three thousand and nine hundred textile and apparel export enterprises nationwide, achieving the best ranking in history as it advanced into top 10.  SUMEC has been awarded the prize of ‘Enterprise with Outstanding Contribution’ by the China Chamber of Commerce for Import and Export of Textile and Apparel in 2016. In domestic market, its self-owned school uniform brand ‘ETON KIDD’ has become the leading brand of China’s school uniform, and the business mode innovation along with the industrial chain is in the ascendant.

They first visited Sri Lanka in July 2014 and were in close communications with the Sri Lanka Chamber of Garment Exporters which represent the SME apparel sector since then. Teams from the Chamber too visited them in October 2014 and were able to convince them with capabilities of the SME apparel sector.

The main objective of their visit was to select factories mainly to source from the SME sector as their sourcing base for manufacturing for the Chinese market especially school uniforms and EU brands/labels such as Matalan, Arcadia, Tesco, TCM, Quick Silver, etc.