The Clothing and Textile Competitiveness Programme makes targeted grants to grow and develop the clothing, textiles, footwear, leather, and leather goods manufacturing sectors. The Clothing and Textile Competitiveness Programme is divided into the Improvement Programme (CTCIP) and the Production Incentive (PI).
Beneficiaries include manufacturers in the South African clothing, textiles, footwear, leather, and leather goods sectors.
The CTCIP makes 65 % grants to individual companies and 75 % grants to company clusters.
The PI makes grants pegged at 7,5 % of individual company manufacturing value addition.
Grants may be used for interventions that improve competitiveness, including upgrades and expansion of capital equipment, increasing productivity, enhancing employee skills, improving products and processes, reducing costs, and subsidising interest payments on debt.
The CTCIP also works toward maximising production capacity development and value-added processing of local raw materials starting with cotton and then broadening its scope toward all other natural and synthetic fibres.
The programme is based on cluster formation of either similar manufacturing entities or a value chain cluster, comprising of manufacturers, suppliers, and retailers in order to engage in collective improvement activities.
The clusters are separate legal entities registered as a not-for profit companies that provide regulatory foundation for financial management and project implementation.
Clusters are divided into two categories, with an ordinary cluster being a group of at least five manufacturing companies or a combination of manufacturing and related organisations (e.g. retailers, design houses, component manufacturers) that are jointly working towards obtaining mutually beneficial objectives, and a national cluster coordinated by a national structure.
All members of the cluster commit themselves to a financial contribution towards the activities.
The PI grant specifically excludes goods manufactured for the automotive sector which qualifies for any incentive programme offered for that sector.
Preference is given to cluster projects that are based on world class manufacturing principles and which take an holistic approach targeting all four of the intervention elements: people, process, product, and market development.
Contact us for easy facilitation of the CTCP grant application.