Sri Lanka manufacturing organic cotton clothes for UK designer Katherine Hamnett

Local garment factories are producing organic cotton clothing for UK designer Katherine Hamnett through UK clothing retailer Tesco. The clothes are designed by Katherine Hamnett and are to be sold at Tesco outlets in the UK. “We are doing an organic cotton range with Katherine Hamnett. We have already confirmed orders with Sri Lankan factories,” said Rachael Smith, the head of buying for girlswear, Tesco UK.

Katharine E. Hamnett is a British fashion designer known for her t-shirts carrying slogans on political, social and environmental issues.
She is also known for her ethical business philosophy. When information on sweatshop labour in the garment industry and pesticide poisoning in cotton-growing regions started surfacing, Hamnett started lobbying for major changes in the way the industry operated.

When the garment industry was slow to respond Hamnett cancelled most of her licensing arrangements, and re-launched her designer clothing line under stricter ethical guidelines. These guidelines imposed ethical manufacturing and agricultural practices on garment suppliers. This year, on Valentines Day, she even launched a line of ethically and environmentally mined gold and diamond jewellery. Sri Lanka’s first Katherine Hamnett order will be shipped to Tesco stores in May-June this year.

Ethical clothing
Tesco is also looking at sourcing Fairtrade clothing from Sri Lanka. “Most of the major UK high street retailers are looking at some percentage of their clothing being Fairtrade. Sri Lanka will be one of the prime sourcing destinations if there is capacity,” said Smith.
UK’s Marks and Spencer (M&S) is another large investor in the Fairtrade field and is already buying Fairtrade clothing from Sri Lanka.
“This country is already making inroads in terms of green production and has very strong labour standards recognised by the EU,” said Krishan Hundal, Head of General Merchandise Technology of M&S, UK speaking at the 85th Textile Institute World Conference held in Colombo in March.

“We are already producing Fairtrade garments in Sri Lanka from Fairtrade cotton grown in India and Africa, which is converted into Fairtrade fabric by a Sri Lankan company Ocean Lanka,” said Hundal. These ethical clothing, in the form of Fairtrade garments, organic clothing or green products are a growing market opportunity for developing country garment manufacturers like Sri Lanka. These practices also have the added advantage of being socially and environmentally friendlier for manufacturing countries.

The movement is particularly strong in the UK which is already Sri Lanka’s second largest export market for garments behind the US and UK clothing retailers are giving into consumer pressure for better manufacturing practices. M&S for instance, is currently looking at becoming the biggest retailer of Fairtrade cotton in the world by increasing its range of Fairtrade cotton clothing.

The company plans to convert all its t-shirts into Fairtrade t-shirts. In total, M&S sells around 300 million items of clothing every year. Over the next 12 months, in keeping with its policy of encouraging better manufacturing practices, M&S will buy 20 million garments made from Fairtrade cotton. Sri Lanka has an opportunity to supply in this area.

Local interest
Earlier this year, Ocean Lanka, Sri Lanka’s largest weft knit fabric manufacturer announced that it had obtained Fairtrade certification from the certification body FLO-Cert GmbH, Germany. Ocean Lanka is already discussing Fairtrade supply opportunities with some leading UK retailers.

Meanwhile other local companies like Hirdaramani and Brandix are also showing interest in Fairtrade certification and Sri Lanka's Fairtrade network is expected to expand within the first half of the year.

However there are no Fairtrade raw material suppliers in Sri Lanka at the moment. To supply Fairtrade fabric for companies like M&S, Ocean Lanka is sourcing Fairtrade yarn from India and Africa. The fabric is then converted into clothing by Fairtrade accredited manufacturers and sold by Fairtrade retailers in the US and Europe.

M&S says their Fairtrade cotton, for M&S Fairtrade trade t-shirts, come from cotton farmers in India and the African countries of Mali, Senegal and the Cameroon. M&S says the cotton farmers are using the fair-trade premium to invest in their societies like building schools, medical facilities and drinking water facilities.