ABSTRACT
Seventy kilometres south of Hanoi lies Nam Dinh, Vietnam’s ‘textile town’, a grim, sprawling industrial city with a population of 250,000 – home to the Nam Dinh Textile Company (Natexco), Vietnam’s oldest, largest and proudest integrated garment and textiles company. Established in 1889, Natexco became one of Vietnam’s industrial behemoths after the introduction of central planning in 1954; by 1988, 17,000 people were employed in its spinning, weaving, dying, sewing and other factories. As Nam Dinh’s main employer, the company provided housing for a quarter of the town’s population in its 4,000 apartments and maintained five crèches, three schools, a hospital and a holiday home by the coast for workers and their families. When market reforms were introduced in Vietnam in the late 1980s under the banner of doi moi, Natexco was poorly placed to cope. The company’s mainly Chinese machinery was so antiquated – and production so inefficient – that Natexco sold the cotton yarn it spun to other state enterprises, substituting imported yarn for its own weaving workshops.
