Pakistan will be manufacturing the official Fifa 2014 football ‘Brazuca’ of Adidas. The credit for this accomplishment goes to Khawaja Masood Akhtar of Forward Sports, whose endeavours made it possible to go head and grab the contract of 42 million footballs. Khawaja Masood stated that Forward Sports possessed the technology for manufacturing footballs, but Brazuca still required a different means of production.
Khawaja Akhtar stated that that Brazuca has six panels that have been artistically designed and are thermo bonded together. Adidas demanded customized machinery for its production and Forward Sports was able to achieve the goal in 33 days. This seemed an impossible task; as such a setup usually requires 6 months. Diversification of sports product will hopefully increase the current annual revenue of $1.65bn to $15bn by 2025.
Sialkot has overcome scandals of child labour and has moved from hand-made footballs to machine made according to international standards. Consultancy is provided by the international certification agencies in the city on international standards. An international airport and a dry port have been constructed by the city’s industrialists.
In order to adopt international models, government needs to create a platform where workers and experts can gather to learn and display their expertise. Sports Industries Development Centre was created to bring the industry at par with the new international standards. Soon it was realized that machinery made footballs were not that special as presumed to be. So now the handmade production is back in business.