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By Markus van Appeldorn
Millions of meters of what comes off the roll at the textile finisher Ploucquet every year is worn by millions of well-dressed people - mostly men - around the world every day. Lining fabrics for jackets from luxury brands such as Baldessarini, Bogner, Escada, Hugo Boss, Joop, Strenesse, Windsor and many more. But as beautiful as these fabrics are, they are also problematic for the company - because production has been unprofitable for years. This is why Ploucquet is now pulling the ripcord. After the company was sold, production in this division was discontinued. 31 employees had to be made redundant. However, Ploucquet has already started into the future with another product and major investments in it - Africa damask.
"The lining fabric business has always been difficult and was under massive price pressure," says Managing Director Matthias Maier. Suppliers in the Far East would produce much more cheaply. This is why Ploucquet was the last producer of such fabrics on a large scale in Germany. For this reason, the company began years ago to increasingly develop the area of special technical textiles - for fire protection suits, pipe linings or even V-belts for combine harvesters. "In this area, we have up to double-digit percentage growth every year," says Maier - and it was the company's biggest source of income.
Although linings contributed 50 percent to turnover, they contributed virtually nothing to earnings and were even loss-making in some cases. "We had to maintain production for years in order to build up the technical textiles division," says Maier. And then there was always a third area: Ploucquet finished damask fabrics for high-quality clothing in Africa on a large scale for a company in the Czech Republic. Over the years, this company grew to become the largest single customer - and has now acquired Ploucquet. That changes everything in Weinau.
Why Africans love damask from Germany
The Caledon company from Jablonec nad Nisou (Gablonz an der Neiße) near Liberec was founded by a family of textile entrepreneurs based in Bamako, the capital of Mali. Bamako is one of the fastest growing cities in the world. Before French colonization, just 600 people lived in the city on the Niger. In 1950, its population of almost 90,000 was roughly the size of Görlitz at the time - today it has over 4.2 million inhabitants. And Bamako is considered a center of the textile industry and textile trade. In Mali and other West African countries, men wear so-called boubous, full-body suits made of damask. And the wealthy classes in particular attach great importance to the fact that this damask must come from Germany.
"The Africans say: the Germans are the best," explains Maier. In recent years, Caledon has supplied Ploucquet with finished, pattern-woven German damask, which was then dyed and surface-finished in Zittau. "It's all about color, sheen, feel and sound. There's a lot of innovative development involved," says Maier. But then came threatening news from a top customer in the Czech Republic. "The African owners wanted to expand the site in Jablonec to full production and build a new factory there," says Maier - this would have meant the loss of the main customer.
Offered for sale
"We then offered to buy Caledon ourselves because we already had production and all the expertise nearby," says Maier. The Africans finally agreed - since July 2023, Ploucquet has belonged to Caledon and is owned by the African family. Previously, Ploucquet belonged to the Kufner Group based in Unterhaching near Munich. The new owner was also prepared to invest heavily in new machinery in Weinau. "We are investing four million euros in 2024 alone," says Maier. This will entail severe personnel cuts. "There are employees in all areas, from production and administration to sales, who were only involved with linings," explains Maier. However, this production will finally be discontinued in September. "At the beginning of the year, we started not renewing fixed-term contracts and making redundancies for operational reasons," says Maier. 31 employees had to be made redundant. Including (early) retirements, around a third of the 120 employees would leave the company.
But for Ploucquet, this painful step is the only viable option for an economically secure future. But how can it be that the Zittau-based company is on the road to success with Africa damask of all things? while precisely this branch of business is currently causing a crisis with short-time working at Damino in Großschönau? "Our market situation with the African owners is completely different," explains Matthias Maier. We don't deliver to a middleman in crisis-ridden Nigeria, but belong directly to a family business that has been operating in the domestic market for generations and is naturally rooted there. "They run their own stores there and the name is as well-known a brand there as perhaps Apple is here," says Maier.
