Unitim Holdings A.S

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Unitim Holding A.S is a leading retail and garment manufacturer. It was founded by Burchan Cemiloglu as a textile company in 1985 making and exporting knitted apparel for global brands such as Tommy Hilfiger, Nike, Adidas and Marks & Spencer. In 1998 the company entered the retail market by purchasing the Tommy Hilfiger retailing license in Turkey and has since added 12 new brands to its portfolio and distributes those brands through 134 sales points in Russia, Ukraine, Romania, Central Asia Turkish Republics and Turkey. Unitim also has 1 restaurant in Istanbul and is planning to open additional ones in Istanbul and Ankara over the next few months. Finally, Unitim is planning to open a several stores in Joint Venture with Sephora, the cosmetic company. Unitim has approached IFC to request a loan of $30 million for its $90 million corporate investment program which includes: - refinancing the company’s short-term debt due to high growth of business, - expansion of the company’s existing retail networks by adding about 17,000 square meters of additional space, or 89 new stores in order to take advantage of economies of scale; and - expansion of the company’s textile production base to Egypt to reduce costs. The manufacturing expansion will occur during the second phase of the corporate program and will add an additional 4.8 million piece capacity to the existing 8 million piece manufacturing capacity.