With an investment of six million dollars (379.2 million meticals), MozTex, supported by the Aga Khan Network, is committed to revitalising Mozambique’s textile industry, with the aim of recovering the prominent role the country once had in southern Africa, Lusa reported on Monday (26).
‘This is a long-term investment project. That’s why we were appealed to, at state level, so that the Aga Khan fund for economic development could replicate the experience we have in this sector in Kenya, in Mozambique,’ explained Rui Carimo, deputy of the Aga Khan Network’s diplomatic representative.
It’s been 15 years since MozTex started operations, a factory that resulted from the rehabilitation of the former Texlom, which was the largest textile company in Mozambique and one of the benchmarks in southern Africa, located in Matola, on the outskirts of the Mozambican capital.
‘The first investment that had to be made to create MozTex was the refurbishment of the former Texlom facilities. However, in the first 12 years, the factory gave us negative results but we continued with our investments and here we are,’ explained Carimo.
On the same occasion, he pointed out that the company’s main challenge was training the local labour force.
‘We had to train people to work with us and today we have 1,300 internally trained employees, which is a great achievement,’ he said, adding that this training effort was crucial for the company to be able to operate with efficiency and quality, ensuring the sustained growth in production that we are currently seeing.
‘Our production has been leveraged from year to year. From 2022 to 2023, for example, we produced an additional 1.5 million pieces, totalling 5.8 million, all of which will be exported to South Africa,’ concluded the Aga Khan Network’s deputy diplomatic representative.
