Garment factory certifications in Bangladesh

No. A certificate shows that a factory met a standard at the time of its audit, but compliance for your order also depends on what goes into it and where it is made. Materials matter: a GOTS-certified factory can still sew non-certified fabric, so an organic claim needs a transaction certificate for your shipment. Product rules matter: REACH, CPSIA and EN 14682 requirements are tested on your actual garments and trims, and a factory certificate does not cover them. Location matters too: a certificate covers the named site, so production moved to an uncertified unit is not covered. That is why buyers should ask for three things on every order: the certificates and audit reports for the factory producing it, the test reports for the product, and the address of the site where it is made.

Certification schemes such as WRAP, GOTS, OEKO-TEX and ISO 9001 issue a certificate when a site or product meets their requirements. The certificate has a number, a scope and an expiry date, and you can usually check it in a public database. Audit programmes such as Sedex SMETA and amfori BSCI work differently. They produce a detailed report listing findings and non-compliances and, for amfori BSCI, a rating from A to E, but no pass-or-fail certificate. The report shows how working conditions actually look, including problems the factory is correcting, which is often more useful than a certificate on its own. When you check a supplier, ask for the full report rather than a summary or a badge, confirm the audit date, and look at whether earlier findings have been closed since the previous audit.

Both were created in 2013, after the Rana Plaza building collapse. The Accord on Fire and Building Safety was a legally binding agreement between brands, mostly European, and global trade unions. It inspected factories for structural, fire and electrical safety and tracked their repairs. The Alliance for Bangladesh Worker Safety was a similar programme backed mainly by North American brands, and it ran until 2018. In 2020, the Accord’s work inside Bangladesh passed to the RMG Sustainability Council, a national body run jointly by brands, manufacturers and trade unions. In 2021, the International Accord for Health and Safety in the Textile and Garment Industry succeeded the original agreement, and its Bangladesh Safety Agreement is carried out by the council. Export factories outside these programmes are covered by the government’s National Initiative through the Department of Inspection for Factories and Establishments.

Start with where you sell and what your label says. Retailers usually ask for a social compliance audit first: amfori BSCI or Sedex SMETA are common in Europe and the United Kingdom, while WRAP and other scored audits are widely requested in the United States. Product safety comes next. EU and UK buyers expect REACH-compliant materials and often OEKO-TEX STANDARD 100, while kidswear sold in the United States needs CPSIA testing and a Children’s Product Certificate. Claims on the label add requirements, such as GOTS or OCS for organic cotton and GRS or RCS for recycled content, each with transaction certificates. Finally, read your retailer’s supplier manual, because large retailers often add their own standards. Use the table at the top of this page as a starting point, and tell us your market and product before we quote.

Factory and product certifications cannot be created for a single order. Standards such as GOTS, GRS, OEKO-TEX STeP and WRAP require the factory, and often every processing stage in the supply chain, to be audited and certified, which takes months and depends on the factory’s own management systems. So when your order needs a specific certification, we place it with units that already hold it, and share the certificate before production starts. Product tests are different. Tests for restricted substances, colour fastness, shrinkage, flammability, lead and phthalates can be arranged for any order at accredited laboratories in Bangladesh, including international testing groups with local labs. If your brand plans to require a certification in future seasons, tell us early, because it affects which factories and fabric mills can be considered for your range from the start.

Most certificates can be checked against a public database in a few minutes. First, compare the company name and site address on the certificate with the factory’s trade licence and your purchase order, because certificates cover a specific legal entity and address. Next, check the dates, since some certificates last only six or twelve months. Then look the certificate up at the source. WRAP publishes its certified facilities, OEKO-TEX offers Label Check using the certificate number, GOTS and Textile Exchange have searchable databases of certified sites, and ISO management system certificates can be checked through IAF CertSearch or the certification body that issued them. For audits such as SMETA, ask the factory to share the report through the Sedex platform. If a number cannot be found, or the details differ, ask for an explanation before you place the order.

OEKO-TEX STANDARD 100 certifies that a textile has been tested for harmful substances, while GOTS certifies that the fibre is organic and that every processing stage met environmental and social criteria: one is about what is in the product, the other about where it came from and how it was made. Under STANDARD 100 every component, from fabric and thread to buttons, labels and prints, is tested, with limits set by four product classes, the strictest for babies, and the certificate lasts 12 months. It makes no organic claim. GOTS tracks organic fibre from farm to finished garment: a product labelled organic needs at least 95% certified organic fibre, or 70% for made with organic, and each shipment needs its own Transaction Certificate. Use STANDARD 100 for a harmful-substances claim and GOTS for an organic claim. Verify the first in OEKO-TEX Label Check and the second in the GOTS public database.

No: ISO 9001 certifies a garment factory’s quality management system, not the quality of the garments in your order. The certificate shows that the factory has documented processes for order review, purchasing, production control, inspection and corrective action, and evidence that they are followed. It runs for three years with annual surveillance audits, and the number can be checked on IAF CertSearch. What it cannot tell you is whether your style was cut from the approved fabric, sewn to the sealed sample or measured within tolerance. That is proved order by order: bulk fabric tested against the approved swatch, checks on the line, and a final random inspection of the packed goods to ISO 2859-1, where buyers commonly accept no critical defects, AQL 2.5 for major and AQL 4.0 for minor defects. Treat the certificate as a sign of an organised factory, and the inspection report as the evidence for your shipment.