Pou Chen and Kingmaker Footwear are shutting down their shoe factories in Vietnam, as previously reported, and we now hear about the shutdown of at least another local shoe producer, Chang Shin Vietnam Co. Meanwhile a couple of important producers of sports apparel are doing the same as the Covid-19 pandemic is expanding in the country, especially in the Ho Chi Minh City (HCMC) region.
Shenzhou International, a big supplier of Nike and Adidas, said it reduced the production of fabrics and garments at three factories in Vietnam for two weeks, starting on July 19, indicating that this will cause its total annual production in the country to go down by between 1 and 2 percent.
Specifically, fabric production in Tay Ninh Province will be curtailed to 30 percent of the normal capacity. The manufacture of clothing will be cut to 33 percent of capacity at a plant in HCMC, while another apparel plant in an outlying province will fully suspend operations.
Eagle Nice International Holdings, a Hong Kong-based apparel manufacturing company, said it had shut down its facilities in Vietnam for the July 13-23 period. The company is also keeping an eye on its operations in Indonesia, where rising cases of Covid have led the staff to wear masks and to undergo compulsory testing.
According to VN Express, the Vietnamese Health Ministry has counted 80 deaths due to Covid-19 from July 9 to 19, with 70 of them having been recorded in HCMC. This has raised the total number of deaths from the current wave up to 299 in Vietnam. The total number of fatalities since 2020 stands at 334 as the country managed to largely contain the spread of the virus during the initial wave.
