Tri-Star clinches major deal with Intraport

Hiran H .SENEWIRATNE

Tri Star Apparel Exports will work in collaboration with one of the leading London based apparel buyer and designer, Intraport.

This will enable the garment to promote their products to UK’s high street department stores in the future, Chairman Tri Star Kumar Devapura said.

Intraport will invest more than Sterling Pounds one million to strengthen the relationship with Tri Star Apparels, Intraport Managing Director Vino Khanna told the Daily News Business.

He said they currently buy two million numbers of units from India and with this collaboration Intraport will purchase from Sri Lanka for major department stores in UK.

“One of the reasons for us to buy Sri Lankan Apparels is the high quality standards which could easily promote in major department stores in UK and other European Union countries. Therefore, Intraport will help Tri Star Apparels to improve the quality and designs to suit the UK and EU markets”, Khanna said.

He said today the apparel and garment sector is now operating in difficult markets due to the price deflation as most of the customers expect high quality products at a lowest possible price due to the escalation of high commodity retail prices in the West.

Khanna also said that all garment factories should improve the productivity rather than investing on expansion because of the recession in the market.

Therefore, factories must go into more innovation and technology development now to face the current deflation market especially in commodity prices which impact to supply chain, he said.

“It is said that in the last four years customers’ key purchasing power became lower due to the escalation of price and labour charges in retail markets. The cause of these changes was because of change of prices and market changes due to apparel products being personalised things”, he said.

Khanna said where the apparel sector is concerned the consumer has a huge choice due to the strong design taste of customers. Therefore, in this competitive market they will focus on new designs. Intraport is the main supplier for leading brands like Marks and Spencer, Next, Gap, Asda. They also supply one of their in-house brands Laura Asley to Harrods Department Stores, he said.

Khanna said Sri Lanka should aggressively lobby with the European Chamber Commerce to win back the GSP plus, if not it would increase the cost of the product to the buyer in EU countries by 18per cent to 35 per cent.

Tri Star Apparels is one of the leading apparel sector companies running 10 factories in the country with a workforce of more than 10,000 employees. They are also now in the process of opening their new factory in Trincomalee.