Swarp Spinning Mills Plc (Questions)

Swarp Spinning Mills Plc (SSML) is one of the leading industry names in the textile sector in Zambia. The company, which commenced its spinning operations in 1984, is a very good example of how private enterpreneurship could positively contribute to a national economy through job cration and hard currency earnings from exports by successful transfer of technology. Here are some of the questions that were asked to SSML's Managing Director, Ramesh Patel, at the compny's factory situated in Ndola the hub of Zambia's Copperbelt Province, to find out what is making SSML tick.

Q. When did you establish Swarp Spinning Mills Limited and what motivated you to venture into the textile business.

A. SSML was incorporated in 1981 as a private enterpreneur intuitive to meet the domestic demand for 100% cotton yarn from the upcoming local knitting and weaving industries and to provide sewing thread to thriving local garment industries that included our promoting company, Swarp Limited, which is the largest shirt manufacturer in Zambia.

Q. How did you fund the spinning mill project?

A. This project started at a time when foreign exchange was a very scarce resource in Zambia. And for this reason we had decided to split the project into three phases and a proposal along these lines was given to the Development Bank of Zambia (DBZ), the only entity at that time that had foreign exchange for leading to new private sector projects. DBZ questioned the viability of splitting the project. However, they also had limitation on their leading for new projects. Eventually, in 1983,DBZ sanctioned a loan of US$2 million towards the first phase of the project and we secured a supplier's line of credit of US$1.5 million while the shareholders (which included a 10% equity investment from the DBZ) invested another US$1.5 million.

Q. Who supplied the machinery?

A. From the outset we had wanted to produce yarns that met international quality standards and continuously meet the ever increasing demands of the customer. Therefore, we invest in machinery with state of the art technology from leading machinery manufacturers from Germany and Switzerland, that included such reowned names as Trutzchler, Zinser, Schlafhorst, Rieter, Luwa, Thies and Volmann.

Q. How did you train the local personnel to operate this ultra modern equipment?

A. Training was done on site by the machinery suppliers. Subsequently, we have continued to update our workers' skills through regular courses at our in-house training school conducted by resource persons from overseas. We have also received support from the government of India who have financed the training of more than 15 middle management personnel at the South India Textile Research Institution.

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