Apparel, Garment Textiles & Fashion Clothing

Established in 1994 as a standalone knitted garment factory, the Epyllion Group is a vertically integrated knit garment (T-shirt products) manufacturing and exporting group, comprising of nine readymade garment (RMG) companies. The Group`s operations cover the major value chain of the knit garment manufacturing process from knitting, dyeing to sewing and packaging. The four frontline RMG entities of the Group (involved in cutting, making and stitching operations) are Epyllion Knitwear Limited ("EKWL") Epyllion Styles Limited ("ESL"), Mirabella Dresses, and Dekko Knitwears. The four entities have a combined capacity to produce 25 million pieces of knit garments per year. The Group`s two knitted fabric dyeing and finishing entities, Epyllion Knitex Limited (EKL) and Epyllion Fabrics Limited (EFL), have a total fabric dyeing capacity of 30 metric tons per day, all of which is consumed internally by the Group operations. The Group also has an accessories company which produces embroideries, trims, labels and packages, primarily used internally. The Group`s main buyers include C&A, Celio, G star, Marks & Spencer and H&M, with C&A being the biggest. Epyllion is also an IFC advisory services partner and has been involved in IFC`s Cleaner Production (CP) and Dutch funded Partnership for Clean Textile (PACT) program focusing on water efficiency for their wet operations.The investment under consideration is debt financing of $8 million for expansion of the Group`s knitting, sewing and packaging operations in a greenfield facility adjacent to the Dhaka-Chittagong highway, in Madanpur, south-east of Dhaka city ("the facility or Project"). The facility will be a seven storied building with an aggregated area of 469,105 square feet. The building will be divided into four blocks - warehouse, production admin and main production, central admin and utilities. The main operations at the facility will include knitting, cutting, sewing, finishing and packaging along with limited automatic screen printing. The project will be undertaken by EKWL (or "the company") and is expected to increase the Group`s cutting and making capacity by 17 million pieces per year. Construction for the facility is expected to begin in July 2015, with commissioning by July 2017. As the investment is for a defined use of proceeds i.e. establishment of the facility, IFC`s environmental and social (E&S) appraisal as described in the following sections focuses on operations of the facility within the context of the broader approach to E&S management within the Group activities.

Bangladesh