Brandix goes organic for top international brands
Internationally-certified organic cotton ladies’ pants manufactured
by Brandix Group have broken into the 2008 spring and summer collection
of top international retailer NEXT.
This has opened a lucrative new category for the country’s largest
apparel exporter.
The Group’s lead casualwear production facility for NEXT in Giritale
has already supplied more than 10,000 ‘semi-cargo’ pants to the retailer
and anticipates continuing orders as the season progresses, Brandix
Casualwear CEO Pravin Kalpage said.
A unique feature of the orders executed for NEXT is the fact that the
organic fabric used is processed in Sri Lanka at the Brandix Textiles
factory at Makandura, Pannala, which received Organic and Fair Trade
certification from the Institute for Marketecology (IMO) of Switzerland
recently.
NEXT is the third major international chain to place orders for
organic garments from Brandix, he said.
The Group has also received orders for 37,000 pieces of organic
apparel from Marks & Spencer (M&S) the top notch UK retailer, and from
Woolworth in South Africa. The organic fabric for these orders is
imported from India.
“This is just the first phase of initiatives within the group to
establish a fully-integrated organic-certified supply chain that will
enable Brandix to produce 100 per cent organic apparel for leading
global brands,” Kalpage said.
Seven Brandix Casualwear operational locations in Sri Lanka are on
course to receive GOTS (Global Organic Textile Standard) certification
in the final quarter of 2007-08.
The Group’s garment finishing operation Brandix Finishing Limited (BFL)
is also in process of obtaining organic certification, on receipt of
which Brandix expects to be fully geared to provide organic textiles,
organic manufacture and organic washing, he added. |