German footwear entrepreneur Carl-August Seibel, 61 years old, intends on building a footwear manufacturing plant in Kenya, where he already is active with social and humanitarian activities through the Fly and Help Foundation. Seibel, president of the Federal industrial footwear and leather goods’ Association HDS/L and of the footwear museum in Hauenstein, is also ceo of Josef Seibel. The German group has revenue for 130 million euro, employees 3,000 people all over the world and claims it manufactures over 6 million pairs of shoes every year inside its 6 production plants, located in Germany and abroad. The German entrepreneur hopes that this investment will give a future to the young people currently studying inside the schools built by the Fly and Help foundation. Seibel would like to involve the ex-employees now retired that worked for his company, by asking them to teach the future Kenyan employees the craft they are knowledgeable on. The plant should open in 2020 and will manufacture shoes to be exported to other countries in the region (Tanzania, Uganda, Rwanda, Burundi), but also footwear that will be sold with the Josef Seibel brand. The project will cost between 300,000 and 500,000 euro and the plant’s construction should begin before summer of 2019, reads newspaper “Die Rheinpfalz”.
