Interview with Brian Kennedy, Operations Director

What motivated your decision to invest in Morocco?
-    Proximity to the European market
-    Positive experience of the Moroccan workforce
-    Economic, social and political stability
-    Opportunities offered by trade agreements with EU and USA
-    Government’s economic policies

What commercial relationships (import, export, production facility) do you have in the United States?
All the production from our Moroccan sewing plants is exported to the European market. We currently import a small number of machine parts and accessories from the USA.

How do you evaluate the evolution of the Moroccan business environment?
Government economic policy is having a positive impact on the business environment.  There is a focused strategy for the textile sector and this is starting to bear fruit.

How will the Morocco/U.S. free trade agreement benefit your activities?
The FTA has opened the prospect of us exporting a portion of our production from Morocco to the USA.  This was a factor in our choice of Morocco as the location for our investment project.  If we were to export to the US, it would lead to an expansion of our sewing operation in Morocco.

How does your commercial activity relate to the social and economic development priorities of Morocco?
Our investment project will make a considerable contribution to the Moroccan economy.  It will assist the government’s efforts to encourage the establishment of upstream activities in the textile sector and will generate employment for highly trained technical staff.  We will continue to operate with the same high ethical standards that have made us an employer of choice in Salé.

What are your future plans in Morocco?
We are investing $166.7 million in a state of the art textile facility at Skhirat.  This investment project will consolidate our position in Morocco and will lead to a significant increase in the number of people we employ.