Suvin’s Success story in Angola!
Every project makes consultant rich with set of experiences he earned during project. For a successful consultant, it is very necessary to handle variety of projects. Every project is a unique project in its own way, it has different geographies, different people, different conditions, different resources & accordingly planning, methodologies & our approach towards it also differs. Some projects test your technical skills & abilities, but real challenging project is one which not only tests you technical abilities but your intellectual & human skills. We came across such project. The project was real challenge for me & my team as project demanded not just our technical expertise but also our human abilities.
In the year 2010, Marubeni Corporation (“Marubeni”) was awarded a contract for Rehabilitation of Textile Factories in Republic of Angola (“Angola”), from the Ministry of Geology, Mining and Industry (“MGMI”), Angola. For the purpose of reconstruction of textile industries and creation of employment opportunities, Marubeni is in contract with MGMI for the rehabilitation of 3 textile factories (located in Luanda, Benguela and Dondo) on full-turn-key. For the first time toward Angola, this contract was financed by buyer’s credit of Japan Bank for International Cooperation.
The project was envisaged in such a way that the existing buildings will be renovated and the factories will be equipped with the state-of-art textile machines (spinning, weaving, knitting, and dyeing machines) and the utility facilities (captive power house, drain facility and etc). The objective of the project was to enable Angola to substitute some of the textile products being imported with home-made products.
Marubeni scanned Textile Consulting firms all across the world. They had meetings with many of them. With us, they conducted about 4 meetings &finally they zeroed us for the project looking at our potential in setting up any textile project single handedly right from conceptualization to implementation with strong back up of experienced technical team having expertise of more than 25 years in the field.Suvin Advisors Pvt. Ltd. (Suvin), an Indian professional consultancy firm, is the only Indian organization to be a part of this prestigious deal to offer the services of market research, technology selection, project management and operational assistance for the denim and knit processing projects. It was great honor for us to work with such as renowned organization on such a prestigious project.Suvin started the assignment with market research for the analysis of demand supply gap for the denim and knit products in Angola. The assignment was really interesting & challenging for us. It is important to keep your ground work thoroughly ready before you perform any market study & in this case, we need to not only collect secondary data of the apparel market in the regionbut also collect whatever possible information on the people, their culture, their preferences, their behavioral patterns & demography in the region. Our team of consultant gathered whatever possible information to make task of primary survey easier. Initially, Suvin scanned the entire web, all the publications, sector reports, industry database for any relevant data on Angola. However, there was no data available for Angola.
A team of 4 employees from Suvin went on to conduct primary market research for the above products in Luanda, Angola to design perfect product mix. To back up our survey, we did all research in terms of raw material availability in the region as it is the most important deciding factor before finalizing product mix for any factory. It was toughest task to gather information on cotton produced in the region as region was under war for period from 1975 to 2002 & so we gathered cotton data before war period & most recent after war period.Ultimately your product mix has to be in line with raw material available in the region. We deliberately took extra care of this factor while doing our market research. We identified cotton qualities produced in & around Angola to plan strong backward integration.
The major barrier Suvin came across was the language and hence a translator was hired as a mediator between the Angolan people and Suvin employees. Suvin team, while doing primary research, talked to various wholesalers, retailers, government organizations, schools, college & visited many malls, brand stores, retail outlets & interviewed many end consumers of different segments to understand the market gaps for the products in Angola.
Some of the major findings of the report were that the products like denim and knits were majorly imported from countries like Brazil & China and there was huge demand for these products in the market. Based on the market data and analysis by Suvin, product mix was finalized taking into account various factors for denim like color, weight, construction, content of lycra, brand etc. and for t-shirts like construction, fibre, process, print etc.
Post market research, Suvin was involved in technology selection & project management consultancy for two projects namely knit garment project & denim project. Suvin is assisting the client for identification of machinery suppliers, evaluation & selection of suppliers, assistance for negotiating with the suppliers & recommendations. We are also assisting in preparation of machinery layout, master planning, architectural designing, utility data collection & utility designing, structural designing and construction management in collaboration with Techmatex Corporation-A sister concern of Marubeni. Suvin is also handholding the plant in standardizing the operations.
Our customized approach &in-depth understanding of textile project helped us to win further contract of “Erection & Commissioning” of the plant With collaborative approach with Suvin Marubeni has been successful in executing the project till date.
The most important thing we learnt in this project, for any consultant winning over client’s trust is the key to earn more & more projects & then sky is limit for you!With successful Angola project execution along with Marubeni, Suvin is looking for expanding its footprints across the globe!
