Textile producer PT Eratex Djaya Tbk (Eratex) projects that this year's sales will grow 10% compared to last year.

Director of PT Eratex Djaya Tbk, Mandeep Singh said, in 2020, the export market for the company's products in several countries such as the US, Europe, Japan, and other reduced demand countries were concentrating on overcoming the outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic. The policy taken has hit the company's export performance and has an impact on sales decline.

"Lockdown policies, such as in the US and Japan, make access to imported products from other countries closed. Modern markets or malls that target sales of the company's products also do not operate during the lockdown. The policy forced all customers to reduce their demand, pressuring the company's sales during 2020 to fall by 12%, "said Mandeep, Thursday (17/3).

So far, the US and Japan have contributed quite a lot to the company's sales. In 2020, the US market contributed 60.44% and Japan 32.04%, European countries 2.77%, and several other countries such as Hong Kong, Korea, Taiwan, China, and Mexico 4.02%.

During the first two months of 2021, demand for its products in all export destination countries has improved slightly.

"We are optimistic that this condition will last until the end of the year and the export market will be better than the previous year. We also project that our sales can grow 10% this year, "said Mandeep.

Furthermore, the increasing demand for the export market this year after the market has experienced a decline in demand in 2020. As long as the market experiences this sluggishness while reducing production costs, the company also continues to anticipate the possibility of a market recovery by developing new products to diversify its portfolio.

"We hope that the products we developed in 2020 will help increase the number of customers in 2021 and 2022," said Mandeep.