Atlas Copco Pakistan Partners in producing 5.0 million Brazuca

Forward Sports is the largest football & sports ware manufacturer in Sialkot, Pakistan with a production capacity of 700,000 footballs per month. Being the largest manufacturer in Pakistan, they have strategic importance and is being followed by other companies within Sialkot.

Sialkot caters more than 70% of total world demand for hand-stitched inflatable soccer balls i.e. around 40 million balls annually worth US$ 210 million. During the peak season, which repeats after 4 years on the occasion of FIFA orld Cup, the production of inflatable balls exceeds 60 million per annum. These balls are produced by a workforce of around 60,000 working in approx 2400 companies. Sialkot total Exports are around 1.4 Billions per anum and contributes to approx 6% of Pakistan total Export.

Despite being an important industrial city of Pakistan, Sailkot is known to be a market for second hand machinery especially Air compressors. In 2012, Atlas Copco decided to tap this important market and get some reference. We dentified the important customers in Sialkot and Forward Sports was one of our target Customers. We visited, tudied and ayalyzed their compressed air Applications and compressors. Study revealed that they were using second- hand air compressors with very low efficiency and high operating cost. Discussions also gave us a clue about their vision and future plans and their target to manufactuer balls for FIFA world cup 2014. We worked closely with the customer, in 2013 approx after a year, we started with an order of 9 Atlas Copco compressor which included 3 x GA 30 & 6 x GX 2 compressors, our first ever reference in Pakistan for GX compressors. It was a great sucess for Atlas Copco to become partner with this visionary company of Sialkot. This partneership started with 9 compressors in early 2013 have grown to 14 compressors till now.

"Moving forward with FORWARD SPORTS (Winning the World Cup FIFA 2014)."

Although Pakistan as a nation ranks as a modest No. 159 on the global soccer association FIFA’s ranking list, a Pakistani company is No. 1 when it comes to producing balls for the world’s biggest soccer leagues and cups.

Forward Sports is one of the major suppliers for Adidas, the official brand sponsor for the 2014 games. Thanks to a close cooperation, which started in 1995, Forward Sports supplies Adidas with soccer balls for prestigious tournaments and competitions such as the London Olympics, the UEFA Champions League, German Bundesliga and French Ligue 1.

The company produced roughly 5.5 million “Brazuca” balls for the World Cup. The biggest challenge was to quickly establish a production line. “Normally, it takes six months to set up such a line, and we did it in 33 days,” says Akhtar. “We worked day and night to make it possible.” The balls go through rigorous testing at the factory – around 80 tests. Six GX2 and six GA30 compressors from Atlas Copco make the production process more efficient and reliable.

“We need to equip ourselves with state-of-the-art machinery. Using compressed air is vital for most of our critical processes,”