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Cloth masks by van Laack (January 2021)
Photo: Rolf Vennenbernd / dpa
Additional business with corona protective textiles resulted in a high profit for the shirt manufacturer van Laack. The pre-tax profit was 7.4 million euros in the 2019/20 financial year, a year later it was 55.2 million euros, according to the company's annual report. That is almost an eightfold increase. There was no information on net profit in the annual report. Sales soared from 56.1 million to 203.2 million euros. Subsidiaries in Vietnam and Tunisia brought in additional pre-tax profits totaling six million euros. Van Laack's fiscal year ends on April 30th.
After the outbreak of the corona pandemic, the company quickly changed direction and offered, among other things, mouth and nose fabric masks, of which around 130 million were sold.
Company boss and owner Christian von Daniels spoke of an “exceptional year”: “We can't do that again economically.” It was possible to quickly switch production in the plants in Vietnam and Tunisia from conventional clothing to protective masks and hospital gowns.
The state government of North Rhine-Westphalia under the then Prime Minister Armin Laschet was one of the largest clients.
He later came under great public pressure because of the orders, also because contact with the manufacturer was made by his son Joe.
The state government ordered ten million protective gowns from van Laack for 45 million euros, without prior tendering.
However, van Laack's big business with cloth masks ended at the beginning of this year when the state made it mandatory to wear FFP2 masks or surgical masks.
In the meantime, the company from Mönchengladbach has further developed its fabric masks, according to its own information, and products with a higher protective function should come onto the market in the coming weeks.
Three quarters of sales in the 2020/21 financial year are attributable to the medical division, i.e. corona-related additional products such as masks and hospital gowns.
"Without the medical division, losses in the past fiscal year would have been unavoidable," said Daniels.
In the traditional clothing manufacturer's business, things are "going a little better again," says Daniels.
In the first corona year, the shirts were hardly in demand, now sales are picking up: "The days of jogging outfits in the home office are over, people want to be chic again at home and wear shirts or blouses."
As of May 1, van Laack had 218 employees in Germany, 40 fewer than a year earlier.
In addition, 400 people work in the Vietnamese plant and 700 in Tunisia.
fdi / dpa
