Mainland Headwear Holdings has made production adjustments and entered new markets in the wake of the Sars outbreak. The company delayed expansion plans and redesigned the flow of some of its mainland production lines after the government told manufacturers to stop recruiting workers for fear of spreading Sars. Deputy chairwoman Pauline Ngan Po-ling said the company would have to postpone the launch of a new production line from the first half to some time after August. 'We have orders worth millions of US dollars to fulfil until August, but we have managed to cope with the situation by redesigning some production procedures to raise efficiency,' Ms Ngan said after Headwear's annual general meeting. She said buyers had also shifted a small number of orders to South Korea and the Philippines because of the atypical pneumonia outbreak, while the war in Iraq had caused American retail giant Wal-Mart Stores and other leading buyers to delay purchases. To make up for the order shortfalls, the company started marketing golf and winter caps to new customers in the United States.
