Readymade garment manufacturers from Bangladesh and Sri Lanka are planning to come up with eco-friendly jute-based garments with the help from a design school from the island nation, claimed media reports.
“Sri Lanka and Bangladesh are thought to be competing in apparels, but industry leaders from both countries are in conversation about how the clothing market is evolving beyond polymer. They are now coming to a point of convergence… We have to look at the eco-friendly trends shaping the global clothing industry. This is where jute comes in,” maintained Bangladesh High Commissioner to Colombo Riaz Hamidullah while addressing an investment forum ‘Ayubowan Bangladesh’ in Colombo organised by Sri Lanka’s NDB Capital Holdings and NDB Investment Bank recently.
Colombo-based Academy of Design (AOD) will reportedly provide the creative input for this endeavour.
“Well, let me just say that Airbus and BMW use jute for something upmarket. So there’s an opportunity to cooperate. The discussions are ongoing but let me just leave you with that thread… The point I am trying to make is that Sri Lanka and Bangladesh need not compete but collaborate to gain access to new markets and global supply chains,” reportedly further underlined the Bangladesh High Commissioner in Colombo.
The discussions to this end have reportedly been initiated by MAS’ Mahesh Amalean and Brandix’s Ashroff Omar, the two largest apparel exporting companies in Sri Lanka with operations in India, Bangladesh, Vietnam and the USA.
