Background

Last year the mohair, wool and cotton industries were invited to join this project, the great idea of the current Italian Ambassador to SA’s wife. She saw so much talent that she wanted to assist by opening doors to their fashion industry. Part of this is to grow and develop this talent. The younger designers are lacking the skills and craftmanship especially in the knitwear designing and tailoring space. The small-scale manufacturing capabilities are also limited.

The aim was to assist both countries to increase their trade relations in the fashion and related space. There was a fashion project that was established along with SA Fashion Week. Designers were selected based on their collections and the winners were sent to Italy to be trained and to take part in the Milan Fashion Week.

Alongside this the equipment and machinery sectors that supply the textile industry were included in this space.

Project continues 2022

The Italian Trade Agency via the Fashion Bridges project tries to enhance trade between SA and Italy. They coordinated a delegation (machinery suppliers) from Italy to visit the SA mohair, wool and cotton industries starting off with a seminar held in Cape Town where all parties had the opportunity to present their companies/ industries.

Marco Coetzee presented on behalf of the mohair industry and in the afternoon, there were business to business meetings. All the local Western Cape manufacturers were invited to attend.

On the Tuesday they visited Cape Mohair’s sock factory and Winelands Textiles (Ex Hextex near Worcester)

On Wednesday morning they were taken to Stucken Yarn and Specialty Yarn Dyers (SYD) and then onto BKB. In the afternoon they visited SAMIL.

On Wednesday evening the new mayor, Councilor Retief Odendaal and the NMB municipality hosted a dinner in honor of the Italian visitors. The trade was invited to join this occasion.

It is interesting to note that our local processors, spinners, and dye houses have many Italian machines and secondly how little the NMB municipality know about the mohair and wool industries!

Read the full press release on the Nelson Mandela Bay municipality here: