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 Abdullah’s 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. Sapphire’s 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.