Taiwan's Pouchen Group, the world's largest sports and casual shoe manufacturer, is to create 10,000 new jobs at a planned new factory in central China, according to local government sources.
Pouchen will invest 120 million U.S. dollars in the new plant with a yearly production capacity of 12 million pairs of shoes, said the General Office of Anhui Provincial Committee of the Communist Party of China.
It will invest 48 million U.S. dollars in the first phase of the plant which is expected to start production at the end of 2007.
Construction of the plant, to be Pouchen's largest production base, will begin in early 2007 in Wuhu City.
Pouchen Group holds 15 percent of the global market in sports and casual shoes. It designs and manufactures more than 170 million pairs of shoes a year for more than 50 international brands including Nike, Adidas, Reebok and Converse.
Pouchen Group has factories in south China's Guangdong Province and east China's Jiangxi Province.
