SAPPHIRE GROUP OF COMPANIES

The Sapphire Group Headed by a veteran industrialist Mian Abdullah is one of the largest textile manufacturing and exporter groups in Pakistan. Mian Abdullahs repute can be gauged from the fact during the October 2003 meeting at APTMA, more than 1000 textile millers bad tendered their resignations against incumbent Chief Waqar Monnoo to him. Dozens of leading tycoons had proposed his name to head APTMA in case of an interim setup. Having an influence among textile millers is no easy job but Mian Abdullah stands privileged in this context. The Sapphire group started in 1969 is still controlled by Mian Abdullah and his four sons and their sons. Recognizing the disparate goals and objectives of the four sons, the principal heir decided to divide the different business units among his sons. All are responsible for running their own business units and thus for their own profits and losses. But all of them work under one name and that Sapphire group. Sapphire founded in 1969 with the aim to produce quality yarn of different counts. From then till date it owns 20 plants and all of these plants are independent individual units. It employs over 14,000 people and has an annual turnover of $ 435million. Sapphires head offices are located in Karachi and Lahore. Some of the centralized activities like marketing, purchase and raw material procurement are controlled through head offices this splendid empire owns 11 yarn spinning plants (producing 60,000 tonnes of yarn annually), 3 woven plants of greige fabric (producing 50 million metres annually), one yarn dyeing plant (capacity 5 tonnes per day), one knitting unit (10 tonnes per day), one knitted fabric dyeing plant (10 tonnes per day), one woven fabric dyeing and finishing plant (1.2 million metres per month) and three power plants having the capability to produce 40 MW of energy. Sapphire forms synergies with off-shore garments companies. The group markets its products in biggest brand names in Asia, Europe, Australia and North America. The group has been in business for decades now; it evolved as being pioneer business to bring technology effective machinery in its production houses throughout. Apart from that, the executive body is foreign qualified having absolute capacity in running such a big businesses. Past decade witnessed appreciable steps taking by core board to improve overall operations of the company and make the operations more effective. Employee turnover is minimal in Sapphire group; the reason is

competitive perks and handsome salary packages that company offers to its employees. In the overall operations management the company bring about various reforms to get maximum output. The company adopted ISO 9000 as its formal total quality management system to improve overall system and functional operations in company. The core objective behind this adoption was to improve existing operations, improve communication and capitalize on competitive advantage. Furthermore, the company claims to have separate training centre which is being headed by newly developed human resource department which reports to the executive board directly. The group claims to have established Sapphire Training Centre in head office that is in Lahore along with various plant locations too. Though it was big step taken by the company but the training centre is not being fully utilized. In an informal meeting with existing Sapphire employee who is at managerial position in one of the group plants; he said that he rarely got involved into any comprehensive training session initiated by the company in his more than 10 years of career at Sapphire. Moreover, employees lack technical training which means that they do not know how to fully use the modern machinery and technology. They might mishandle expensive machinery and add to the costs of the company and reduce profits. Modern business theories suggest that employee motivation as well as employee training and development are an important topic of concern for companies to flourish. Employees are motivated; they are not developed. The employee comes with preloaded education and skills; traditional managerial environment of the company does not allow employees to polish and enhance their skills. Employees are benefitted with increments and fringe benefits but there is no scope for employees to skill themselves. This is not the case only with Sapphire; textile groups in Pakistan are mostly run by veteran old industrialists to whom maximum profits is the ultimate goal and there is no future brainstorming in terms of development and enhancement. The company need to seriously drop down various methods and techniques followed internationally to cope up with emerging needs of business world.