Hong Kong-based footwear group Stella International has announced that it will move some of its production from Vietnam to Indonesia. BY Leatherbiz.

In a business update on March 21, it said it was “well ahead of schedule” in achieving the objectives of a three-year plan it has put in place for the period from 2023 to 2025. Its aims are to achieve an operating margins of 10% and a profit growth rate of between 10% and 15% by the end of 2025.

It said “a much-enhanced customer and product mix” was an important part of this plan and that its focus was now more firmly on higher-end footwear than on sports shoes. Stella said this was to offset destocking by customers in the sports footwear sector.

Following on from this, it said it expects its non-sports factories to operate at close to full capacity this year. It is as part of its efforts to increase production of formal shoes that it will move production from Vietnam to Indonesia.

Stella opened a factory at Solo in Indonesia in 2019 as part of a wider policy of making fewer shoes in China and more in other parts of Asia. Workers there will learn the new skills required to make fashion shoes and this will become part of that factory’s output, the group said.

It also said that it expects orders for athletic footwear to increase again in the course of 2024 and that it would push forward with plans to build new factories, one in Indonesia and one in Bangladesh, to increase production capacity for that market too.