Taiwan-based sports footwear multinational Sports Gear inaugurated its first factory in Portugal last Friday, expecting to produce 200,000 pairs in its first year and triple production by 2027, reports Portuguese newspaper Diário de Notícias. The 15.3-billion-euro (US$16.75 billion) factory in Estarreja, a small municipality south of Porto, currently has 20 workers, a figure Sports Gear Portugal (SGP) expects to double by July.
Sports Gear produces shoes for the sportswear and performance markets for brands like Adidas, Nike, Puma, Brooks and Asics. Headquartered on the island of Taiwan, with factories in Vietnam and Cambodia, the company manufactured 36 million pairs of shoes in 2024, generating sales of US$573 million.
The Estarreja factory ensures production close to the European market, taking advantage of Portugal’s long history of footwear manufacturing and “vast resources that offer possibilities that do not exist in Southeast Asia,” Ben Metcalf, spokesperson for Sports Gear and assistant to the CEO, told the newspaper.
“With the strength of Portugal in automation and innovation, we have faith that, together with our local partners, we will be able to unlock solutions that the footwear industry has tried to solve for years.”
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Sports Gear, he explained, has been present in Portugal since 2017, “working with reliable suppliers with an innovation mindset,” in order to find “strategic partners who share our vision of the future of the industry.” Chief among those partners is Fernando Ferro & Irmão (FFI) Group, a Portuguese multinational precision machining group headquartered in the same Estarreja business park as the new SGP factory.
SGP purchased the land for its new factory from FFI Group five years ago, a technological partnership between the two companies growing over the years into a “relationship of trust,” according to a statement released by SGP on Wednesday. FFI assisted with the logistics of construction and implementation, likely through its unit Techlasts, touted as providing “specialised high-precision solutions for the footwear industry.”
With that technical expertise, SGP “aims to establish a reference centre in the production of sports shoes,” according to the Wednesday statement.
When asked by Diário de Notícias about potential future investments in Portugal, Metcalf said, “Currently, we are focused on ensuring that Sports Gear Portugal starts on the right foot, but we have faith that, as we continue to integrate in the local community, there will be opportunities for growth.”
