The group of Mozambican and Portuguese companies has purchased the assets of Riopele, a  Marrcacuene textile company, 30 km north of Maputo, which has been abandoned for the past 20 years. They plan to spend 40 million dollars in the next three year to bring the company back to textile production again.

The Mozambican companies, Intelec Holdings and three Portuguese textile firms as Mundotextil, Mundifios and Crispim Abreu will cooperate to form a company named Mozambique Cotton Manufacturers (MCM).

The Director-General of MCM, André Vieira, said the company is currently exporting 100% of production to Portugal and South Africa and is considering expansion to countries of the Southern African Development Community (SADC), according to Mozambican news agency AIM. The cotton used by MCM is provided by Plexus, a company present in the province of Cabo Delgado that aggregates the production of small farmers, Olam in Manica and Sofala, small operators in the centre of the country and across the country the João Ferreira dos Santos Group 

In 2014, MCM invested 27 million dollars of investment in weaving machinery, a dyeing and finishing unit and a waste water treatment station. Since then, the company has created more than 7500 jobs. They want to encourage cotton production in southern Mozambique.  The three Portuguese partners in MCM already own a cotton ginning mill in Gaza province, acquired in 2006. MCM forecast that 10,000 peasant households in Gaza will grow cotton under the project, and more than further 5,000 in the neighbouring province of Inhambane.

Abdula’s vision is that MCM will be an integrated business, doing everything from cotton ginning to the production of textiles and clothing.