BBC:
It’s likely that you have not heard of Taiwan’s Hong Fu Industrial Group, but look down on a busy street and you may well see its products.
Hong Fu is the world’s second-biggest maker of trainers (sneakers) supplying shoes to Nike, Converse, Adidas, Puma and many others. It makes around 200 million pairs of sports shoes a year.
So when it made a big investment in India’s market, the footwear industry took note.
Hong Fu is currently building a giant plant in Panapakkam, in the state of Tamil Nadu in south eastern India. When fully operation, sometime in the next three to five years, it will make 25 million pairs of shoes a year, employing as many as 25,000 workers.
The project has Indian partners, including Aqeel Panaruna, the chairman of Florence Shoe Company: “The international market is saturated and they [Hong Fu] were looking for a new market,” he explains.
“There is a drastic increase in non-leather footwear in India. It has huge potential,” Mr Panaruna added.
The Indian government is keen to attract such investment, hoping it will raise standards in the footwear industry and boost exports.
To spur the industry, last August the Bureau of Indian Standards (BIS) introduced new quality rules for all shoes sold in India.
Under those standards, for example, materials will have to pass tests of strength and flexibility.
“These BIS standards are really about cleaning up the market. We’ve had too many low-quality products flooding in, and consumers deserve better,” says Sandeep Sharma a journalist and footwear industry expert.
