New plant to be built in "Trousers Valley"

With more than six million trousers manufactured in 2000, Covasna County is the world’s leading producer when it comes to the number of trousers per capita. James Rosapepe, former US ambassador to Romania, during a visit in Sfantu Gheorghe last year called this area “Trousers Valley.” German concern Brax Leineweber is building the largest trousers factory in Romania in “Trousers Valley.”

According to the plans, activity is due to begin in November, by which time the construction is supposed to be finished and the equipment brought from Germany.

Late last year, Leineweber RO Company, part of the Germany-based Leineweber, signed a construction contract with Harcon SA Company from Hungary for building a trousers factory in Sfantu Gheorghe. The works started in February 2001, the production being scheduled to start in November.

The new factory will make quality trousers for European Union markets. The company’s general manager Keresztes Zoltan says the value of the investment amounts to more than DM20 million. The Sfantu-Gheorghe-based factory will operate under the lohn system, as all the raw material will be imported, producing about 3,000 trousers a day.

The entire output will go to Germany to be marketed by the parent-company in Western European outlets. At the moment, Leineweber RO has provisional headquarters in Sfantu-Gheorghe, waiting for the construction works to be completed.

Leineweber RO is 100% owned by German Leineweber Brax Concern. This concern, which bears the funding of the entire investment, was established in 1888 and is now producing about five million trousers a year.

Leineweber RO will be the largest trousers factory in Romania. “It will produce only high-quality pants of all types and all of them will go to the Western market. We’ll start slow, but we’re planning to reach the maximum capacity in three years, that is three thousand pants a day,” the general manager says. The company will hire 150 people this fall, with more to come over the next years (up to 400).

The trousers factory is built on the industrial platform of the city, nearby one of the leading corrugated cardboard makers in the country, Dunapack Rambox. The construction of the building, which is to take up more than 13,000 sqm, was started in February this year and the resistance pillars of the halls have already been erected.

Keresztes Zoltan says he does not expect the deadline for the construction to be a problem. “Everything used in the construction works here is state-of-the-art in the field. The equipment will be shipped in from Germany, starting September, soon after the constructing company finishes its work.”