Bulacan-based ecozone firm ships first garments order to South Korea

SAN RAFAEL, Bulacan, Philippines -  – At least 60,000 boxes of inner garments will be shipped next week to South Korea by the first locator at the Pilipinas Development Corp. (PDC) Information Technology Park here.

This came after President Aquino declared the IT park as an economic zone last Jan. 12.

JB Kim, the plant manager of the Korean owned All About Inner Wear (AAIN) manufacturing company, said the shipment is long overdue.

He said their clients in South Korea have been nagging them for the supply they ordered as early as last year.

“That’s the reason why we started our operation last December ahead of the President’s declaration,” Kim said.

AAIN is an exclusive manufacturer for Cotton Club, Sua Fam and other companies selling male and female inner garments like brassieres, bikinis, sandos, boxer shorts and others in South Korea.

The company came to PDIC IT Park last August where they established their manufacturing facilities and trained an initial 198 workers from Bulacan.

Kim said that they would hire 500 new workers within the year as more machineries and other equipment arrives.

When asked by The STAR why they chose to establish a manufacturing facility in Bulacan, Kim said that local workers are easy to adapt and handle products with care.

“Bulacan has many good workers and they speak English well,” Kim said, adding that AAIN also has plants in Indonesia and Vietnam.

For her part, San Rafael Mayor Lorna Silverio said AAIN’s operation at the PDC IT Park is an exemption to the rule.

“We are supposed to have IT companies here, but they came ahead of the presidential proclamation,” Silverio said, revealing that a total of P500 million in investments were poured in San Rafael last year.

As a declared economic zone, she said that companies that would establish operation at the PDC IT Park would have tax perks in the first three years.

That includes tax exemption for imported machineries and equipment that would be used by investors.

Aside from AAIN, two other companies have established operations at the economic zone including Sharp Philippines and Dais Corp., a Hong Kong-based company.

Another company, the Sutherland Global Services, one of the biggest business process outsourcing (BPO) company in the country with headquarters in the United States, has expressed interest to establish call center facilities in the 8.8-hectare economic zone.

Silverio said they are meeting with the BPO Association of the Philippines this month to promote the IT park to prospective investors.

She said that one of the benefits of having an economic zone is the massive job opportunities that it would generate.

“Tax breaks means less taxes in the first years operations of a company, but it will generate jobs that the LGU cannot create,” she said.