Reducing Costs: Reducing Carbon Emissions in the Garment Industry

In recent years, when participating in market competition with other textile and garment manufacturing countries, it was emphasized that sustainable production is becoming the most powerful competitive advantage for Sri Lankan manufacturers.

Since 2008, the Brandix Group, Sri Lanka’s largest apparel manufacturer, has reduced carbon emissions by 30%. The group plans to continue to reduce carbon emissions by 20% from 2013 to 2020. At the same time, the company hopes that in the next five years, the turnover can grow from 600 million U.S. dollars in 2011 to 1 billion U.S. dollars.

Although the company has not been able to earn high market profits through sustainable manufactured products, sustainable production methods have helped them effectively reduce costs in the past few years. During the period of sharp increase in production costs, the prices of its products remained stable, attracting more orders.

According to statistics, from January 2008 to June 2012, the average price of imported clothing in the EU has increased by 24%, while the price of clothing imported from Sri Lanka has only increased by 13.8%. The increase was lower than most Asian apparel suppliers, such as Vietnam (186.8%), Bangladesh (51.1%) and Indonesia (38.9%).