Brazuca Bonanza

Brazuca Bonanza

Success of World Cup ball leads to revival in Pakistani town once known as the global capital of hand-stitched footballs.

Often remembered on the global scene for all the wrong reasons, Pakistanis are taking pride in the fact that the footballs being used in the 2014 Fifa World Cup have been produced in their country. In fact, the current joke doing the rounds is, “Thank God we’re now exporting Brazucas instead of Bazookas!”

“The reason we fought back and are supplying the Brazuca for the 2014 Fifa World Cup is that we focused on research and development”

KHAWAJA MASOOD AKHTAR
CEO, Forward Sports

It’s not that the country has suddenly become a global hub for sporting goods. It has known success in the past but the playing field had certainly not been level in recent years. Now there are hopes for a revival, with businesses inspired by the example of the World Cup ball maker Forward Sports and its visionary chief executive.

Two decades ago, Pakistan had the lion’s share in the international market for football manufacturing. Back then, the balls were primarily hand-stitched and child labour was a norm.

Local boys from around 1,600 villages the district of Sialkot in Punjab province would start working from as young as age seven to 10 years, and become masters of the technique of stitching footballs by the time they were in their late teens.

Children were preferred instead of adults for the simple reason that they were available for much lower wages, thus giving the manufacturers a greater margin of profit. Another reason for employing children was their easier availability, as making footballs was mostly piecework at the cottage industry level. With women and children at home during the daytime, middlemen would engage them for the task of hand-stitching.

This exploitative form of labour came under the media glare around the time of the 1994 World Cup in the United States. Suppliers faced the cancellation of their licences if they did not eliminate children from their processes. The reforms led to the signing of the Atlanta Agreement between the International Labour Organization (ILO), Unicef, the International Federation of Football Associations (Fifa), and the Sialkot Chamber of Commerce, which consisted of 66 manufacturers representing 95% of total football production in the district.

The reform effort included rehabilitative education centres for child labourers, microcredit programmes to compensate for the reduction of family incomes, and monitoring of production facilities.

While Pakistan was undergoing the transition and cleansing the industry of the disgraceful stain of the sweat of children’s labour, China seized the opportunity to meet product demand for the global football industry.

It replicated the Sialkot model by creating an “ecosystem” of unskilled and unemployed boys (but not children) from across the country for the task of stitching footballs for local manufacturers. China subsequently anticipated the increased productivity from the mechanisation of the processes, and replaced hand-stitched balls with machine-made ones.

In an industry where a worker typically could hand-stitch five or six balls a day, machines allowed producers to lift output dramatically. By 2010 Pakistan’s share had shrunk to only one-fifth of the worldwide market for footballs.

Even so, at least one company in the export-focused town of Sialkot did not lose hope, and continued to adapt modern techniques to making balls for the world’s most popular game.

“The reason we fought back and are supplying the Brazuca for the 2014 Fifa World Cup is that we focused on research and development,” explains Khawaja Masood Akhtar, the chief executive officer of Forward Sports.

The company has a long association of manufacturing sporting goods for Adidas, the official supplier for the World Cup since 1970. Mr Akhtar himself joined his uncle’s football making business in the 1980s before moving on to establish Forward Sports in 1990. Two decades later, his son Khawaja Hassan is helping to keep the company at the cutting edge of its field.

The philosophy of the company is to focus on innovating and adapting the latest technology in the area of its expertise. Hassan prepared for his role by attending Loughborough University in Leicester, England, where he studied engineering management.

“Since the university actually teaches sports technology and football as a subject, when I asked him to learn about thermo-bonded technology he did the job fairly quickly,” said Mr Akhtar.

Even so, winning back lost orders was an uphill battle. One has to exceed expectations not only in terms of technology but also quality and price, and provide something extra besides.

“By the grace of God, in 2008 we applied the thermo-bonded technology and were able to manufacture high-tech footballs, with the result that the Champions League ball contract was awarded to us about two years ago,” said Mr Akhtar.

“After that we got orders for 13 major leagues, sponsored by Adidas, including the French League and German Bundesliga.”

The contract to supply the Brazuca balls initially was assigned to a Chinese company, which was struggling to meet the requirements of Fifa.

The making of the official football is based on a new technology that involves thermal treatment. The idea is to minimise drag by making the seams as unobtrusive as possible on a ball constructed with a record-low six panels, compared with 32 for a conventional football.

Forward Sports spotted the opportunity and convinced Adidas to award the contract to it by developing similar technology in merely a month.

“The World Cup ball [contract] was with this Chinese competitor but he was running low in capacity so I was asked to manufacture it, and I rose to the task and took the risk,” Mr Akhtar explains.

“It took the Chinese six months to set up their production lines but we managed to do it in 33 days. With the thermo-bonded system, it was an advanced-technology ball. The machines for it were not available. It required robotic machines and very complicated software, which we produced indigenously from start to finish.”

In addition to the Brazuca, Forward Sports currently produces up to 30,000 balls per day, most of which are machine-stitched. The company is also working on new designs of balls for upcoming tournaments. It has spent considerable energy and numerous resources on developing technologies and importing testing machinery, and has created a loop for optimising product properties.

Mr Akhtar believes Pakistan can recover its lost share in the football industry in the coming years if it continues to evolve and pursue more efficient processes and adopt more innovative practices. There has already been a spillover effect of the new technology associated with Brazuca production on neighbouring companies in the same business, he notes.

Also, the euphoria surrounding the World Cup has created so much demand for footballs that the hand-stitched market has naturally revived. For instance, another company in town, Talon Sports, was awarded a promotional order to supply 5-6 million hand-stitched balls prior to the World Cup at a fraction of the price of the Brazuca.

The project was a challenge for Talon Sports, as it had to re-establish the “ecosystem” to support an almost obsolete technique. In addition, most of the labourers with the required skills had already moved to other industries. However, the company rose to the task and managed to gather a workforce, thus executing the order in time. This cheaper option, of hand-stitched balls, will probably be used to promote football in those countries where the game is less popular.

The entrepreneurial, unified spirit of Sialkot stands out in a country where two decades of violence and terror have wrought tremendous harm on the economy, workers and families. Local businessmen in Sialkot have even built an international airport by themselves through funds provided by around 350 local companies.

Similarly, roads, hotels and restaurants have sprung up in the city to facilitate foreign businesses. As law and order in the city is much better than in other exporting hubs such as violence-plagued Karachi, there is a fair chance of more foreign companies increasing their business share in Sialkot.

Sialkot is the hub of exports for sporting goods, surgical instruments and leather goods. The local industry comprises a few hundred small and medium-sized companies, with revenues ranging from approximately $4 million to $40 million.

The total value of exports from the town is estimated to be worth between $700 million and $800 million.

The Brazuca itself has been better received than many of its World Cup predecessors. The Jabulani used in South Africa in 2010 was said to be so unpredictable that it bordered on the “supernatural”. The Fevernova used in South Korea and Japan in 2002 was said to be too light and bouncy, while some complained that Teamgeist used in Germany in 2006 was too slippery.

With just six panels — the Jabulani had 14 and the Teamgeist 8 — the Brazuca has a more stable flight trajectory, which makes most players happy. Goalkeepers also like it, although some strikers are unhappy as they’d prefer a ball that they can make dip and dive a bit.

Mr Akhtar and his family are very proud of their company’s achievement, but he is not being complacent. He and his R&D team are already working on advanced techniques for manufacturing balls for upcoming competitions.

Meanwhile, the Brazuca story has helped project a better image for Pakistan, which is winning praise as the home of the best football ever. This will have a far-reaching positive impact on other sporting goods manufacturers, as well as the other export industries in the country.

“When the international media came here to cover the Brazuca story, I felt it was like a dream come true,” said Mr Akhtar.

“To be representing Pakistan for something positive, on such a huge scale, is a matter of national pride.”

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