Hanesbrands acquires textile plant in El Salvador

Hanesbrands Inc. on September 6 announced that it has acquired the textile manufacturing operations of Industrias Duraflex, S.A. de C.V., in San Juan Opico, El Salvador. The acquisition concluded a successful first year as an independent company.

The 1,300-employee Duraflex operation, which will be known as Hanesbrands El Salvador Textiles, is the company’s second self-owned offshore textile fabric manufacturing plant. In the past year, Hanesbrands also successfully ramped up production at its new textile plant built in Bonao, Dominican Republic. Hanesbrands, a leading manufacturer and marketer of innerwear, outerwear and hosiery apparel under leading brands such as Hanes, Champion, Playtex and Bali, also operates 27 sewing and cutting plants offshore.

Since Hanesbrands spun off as an independent company and its stock began trading publicly on September 6, 2006, the company has made significant progress executing its key success strategies. The company has invested in its brands, improved its cost structure, and used its strong cash flow to reduce debt and fund key strategic initiatives.

“Hanesbrands and its employees worldwide have accomplished many important improvement initiatives in the first year as an independent public company,” said Hanesbrands chief executive officer Richard A. Noll. “Our ability to manage change has been critical to our success and will continue to be integral to our efforts to achieve our long-term growth goals.

“The addition of fabric production capacity in El Salvador is another significant milestone in our efforts to create a lower-cost supply chain operating fewer, larger plants that are more effectively aligned with our production flow. We already own sewing plants in El Salvador and elsewhere in Central America. We now have a textile and sewing base in Central America that gives us flexibility to expand and leverage our large scale of production.”

The 350,000-square-foot Hanesbrands El Salvador Textiles plant, which already makes fleece, T-shirt and underwear fabric for Hanesbrands, will continue operations uninterrupted. The management team at the plant, located 20 miles west of San Salvador, will remain affiliated with Hanesbrands. Terms of the acquisition are not being disclosed.

Industrias Duraflex had supplied Hanesbrands with apparel fabric since the early 1990s. The companies entered a supply alliance in 2005 that allowed Duraflex to quadruple its production capacity. With the purchase, Hanesbrands expects to make additional investment for growth.

“This is an extremely strong operation with an outstanding management team and workforce who are already very familiar with our products and way of doing business,” said Gerald Evans, Hanesbrands executive vice president and chief global supply chain officer. “We are expanding in El Salvador as we create a balanced global supply chain and move production to lower-cost countries to remain competitive.”