Kohinoor
impresses again in textile sector Nobody was surprised to find out that the organization had done well
I
t seems like Kohinoor Textile Mills is set on its upward trajectory. The company recently released its financial results for the first quarter of fiscal year 2022, and to no one’s surprise, it had done well. According to the report, the company’s sales for this quarter increased by 12.5% year-on-year to Rs7,963 million, while operating profit shot up from Rs782 million to Rs1523 million. And the mill’s net income similarly rose from Rs513 million in 2020 to Rs995 million in 2021. And it was enough for others to notice. In a note sent to clients on October 27, AKD Securities research arm noted that Kohinoor Textile Mills was benefitting from growth in textile exports. Not that Kohinoor has had any trouble figuring out how to make revenue. The mills
TEXTILES
are one of the oldest companies in Pakistan, having been set up in 1953 by the Saigols. The Saigols were initially farmers from the village Khotian, in Chakwal District in Punjab. It was Sayeed Saigol who decided to pack up hig bags and make something of himself, setting up a shoe shop in Calcutta in the 1930s. That morphed into a rubber shoe factory, called Kohinoor Rubber. Demand for his business soared due to the outbreak of World War II, as the British army needed shoes and coats. Anticipating partition in the 1940s, Sayeed again packed up, and left for Lyallpur (now Faisalabad). WIth his younger brothers Yousaf and Bashir, they set up the first spinning mill in Faisalabad – Kohinoor Textile Mills, under the umbrella company Kohinoor Industries. It was to be their flagship company un-
til their much larger investment: the setting up of United Bank in 1958, which is currently Pakistan’s second largest bank. By the 1960s, they had their bank textile mills and investments in printing, sugar mills, and chemicals business. But in the 1970s, nationalization came for their bank, chemicals, ginning and edible oil businesses. Only their textile and sugar mills remained. Various Saigols crop up in different companies , as directors and shareholders, as the company was heavily split up between cousins and family members in the 1970s, with various efforts at consolidation in the decades after. Today Taufeeq Saigol is the CEO of Kohinoor Textile Mills, while Tariq Saigol is the chairman. It is one of the major textile exporters in the country, with the company’s major trading partners the EU and the US. The principal activity of the company is
13
