Internationally certified organic cotton ladies pants manufactured by the Brandix Group broke into the 2008 spring and summer collection of top international retailer NEXT, opening up a lucrative new category for the country’s largest apparel exporter.
“The group’s lead casual wear production facility for NEXT in Giritale has already supplied more than 10,000 semi cargo pants to the retailer and we anticipate continuing orders as the season progresses,” Pravin Kalpage, CEO, Brandix Casual Wear 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. It received the 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. “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% organic apparel for leading global brands,” Kalpage said.
Brandix Casualwear operational locations in Sri Lanka are on course to receive the Global Organic Textile Standard (GOTS) certification in the final quarter of 2007-08. The certification is the definitive global certification for organic textiles and covers the production, processing, manufacturing, packaging, labelling, export, import and distribution of all natural fibres. The aim of the standard is to define requirements to ensure organic status of textiles, from harvesting of the raw materials, through environmentally and socially responsible manufacturing up to labelling. This is in order to provide a credible assurance to the end consumer.
