An Australian company with a 165-year history as a hat maker has entered into a BOI agreement to set up a factory at Wattala to make their high-end hats for markets in Europe, US, Australia, New Zealand and Japan.

The agreement signed recently between Statesman Hats (Pte) Limited and the BOI enables the transfer of skills and expertise from over a century of hat making to employees of the Sri Lanka factory.

"Our goal is to make Statesman hats a world leader in the manufacture of quality headwear," Mr. James Baldwin, Managing Director of Mount Castle (Pty) Limited of Australia said.

Statesman Hats will manufacture products of a world’s best quality standard such as Peaked Military Caps, Police Headwear, Casual Lifestyle Headwear and Academic Regalia for clients such as Polo, Helen Kaminski and Gieves & Hawkes.

Among the products are high quality hats made out of raffia.

These are sold at exclusive boutiques overseas under designer labels.

He said "The Company believes that Sri Lanka has its best competitive advantage against other manufacturing based economies in its people’s ability to understand quality and to be successfully trained to achieve these standards".

"The ventures success will depend on how successfully we achieve consistent quality. It is the way that our enterprise will maintain its markets and profitability going forward" he further stated. The company believes that the Sri Lankan enterprise is in a position to provide products and customer service to its markets that it will give them the competitive edge. Their products will be the highest quality products available in the market and therefore will be of the best value for money.

Mr. Baldwin alongwith Mr.Taher Jafferjee thanked the BOI for providing them with the opportunity of becoming a part of the BOI community.