Fabricato SA
Carrera 50 No 38 – 320
Bello, Antioquia, Colombia
Phone: 57-4-448-3500
www.fabricato.com

Textiles Fabicato Tejicóndor S.A., together with its subsidiaries, engages in the textile business in Colombia. It provides a range of textile and tailoring products, including yarns; flat woven fabrics, such as denim, twilled, poplin, and wool; knitted fabrics; and nonwoven fabrics, linings, and household linens. The company also exports its products to Latin America, Europe, and the United States.

The company’s roots are traced back to Fabrica de Hilados y Tejidos el Hato, which was founded in 1920 by Carlos Mejía, Antonio Navarro and Alberto Echavarría in Bello, Colombia, where the headquarters still stand today. Operations began in 1923 with a total of 80 workers, 104 looms and 3,284 spindles, spinning cotton from the Colombian Atlantic coast and from U.S.

The first product launched by the company was Coleta Gloria, which initially lacked the acceptance expected since it competed with British and French fabrics that were imported into Colombia free of tax.

The following decade saw the company begin production of check fabrics, towels and fancy fabrics in addition to purchasing Fábrica de Tejidos de Bello.

In 1941, Fabricato acquired Compañía de Tejidos Santa Fe, and began to produce prints that same year. In 1944, Textiles Panamericanos Pantex was founded in association with the U.S. firm Burlington Mills Corporation.

The year 1961 was an important year for Fabricato because it began to export its products due to the wider acceptance and top-quality of its fabrics. This in turn paved its way towards an increasingly growing market, which represented an important source of foreign currency for Colombia.

Fabricato’s nonwovens plant began operations in 1968 in the municipality of Bello, with 10 workers, a line of disposables and a production capacity of one million linear meters per month.
Since then, this plant has been devoted to producing nonwoven and disposable fabrics; interlinings; complements for garment manufacturing; and products for industrial, residential, surgical and hygiene applications. The plant has a total capacity of 90,000 meters of fabric per day.

Fabricato’s Nonwovens Division produces linings for tailoring applications and industrial uses such as seepage, footwear and leatherwork, hygiene, protection and support for coating. Product applications also include wadding, batting, wipes and filters.

In 1976, the President of the Republic granted for the first time in Colombia the Quality Award to Fabricato, recognizing its excellent products and recognizing that the company fully met all of the requirements to use quality systems based on the international and national standards established by the National Council of Standards and Qualities —ICONTEC.

A decade later Fabricato attended the first textile and goods exhibition of garment manufacturing—Colombiatex—where it presented the report “Europe 89” with its products and industrial line, and a fashion show for its Riotex.

To celebrate its 70th anniversary, Fabricato established a new logo and published a promotional document called “70 Years” which was inserted in the El Colombiano and El Mundo newspapers.
The current Textiles Fabricato Tejicóndor was born in 2002, as a result of a merger between Fábrica de Hilados y Tejidos el Hato (Fabricato) and Textiles El Cóndor (Tejicóndor). Including the nonwovens plant, the company operates 6 production plants and provides textile products for attending national and international markets.

In 2009, Fabricato inaugurated the most modern Indigo plant in Latin America after investing US$40 million, increasing production by one million meters.

Recent reports suggest Fabricato, which is today Colombia’s largest textile company, is consolidating its network of factories in the country and elsewhere in Latin America faced with increasing competition from mostly Chinese imports in the Colombian market. At the same time, the company is growing exports very rapidly, and has set its sights on more U.S. sales now that the U.S.-Colombia Free Trade deal is in place.