Bangladesh vs Portugal vs Turkey: far sourcing or near sourcing?

Bangladesh is far sourcing: the lowest labour cost of the three and huge scale in basics, but garments spend weeks at sea. Portugal and Turkey are near sourcing for European buyers: higher wages, smaller runs and delivery by road. Into the EU, all three can enter free of customs duty today, each under a different rule. Many brands use both: core volume from Bangladesh, fast repeats from near the market.

Far sourcing or near sourcing: what is the real choice?

For a brand selling in Europe, the question is rarely “which country is best?”. It is which part of the range should be made far away and which close to home. Far sourcing buys low unit cost and scale at the price of time. Near sourcing buys speed and flexibility at the price of a higher unit cost. The right answer depends on how predictable each style is.

This guide compares Bangladesh with Portugal and Turkey on the things that decide that split: scale, labour cost, duty into the EU and UK, transit time, and product strengths. It does not repeat our comparison of Bangladesh, Vietnam, China and India, which covers the Asian alternatives.

How big is each country’s clothing industry?

The three are in different leagues, and the numbers are reported in different currencies and years, so read the table as scale rather than as a ranking to two decimal places.

Two trends stand out. Turkey’s apparel exports have fallen for three years in a row, from USD 21.2 billion in 2022 to USD 16.8 billion in 2025, according to the same İHKİB report. Portugal’s textile and clothing exports slipped 0.8% in 2025, with clothing down 0.3%. Bangladesh’s garment exports dipped 1.64% in its fiscal year, while EU imports from Bangladesh grew 9.6% in the first ten months of 2025. Scale matters for a buyer because it decides how deep the fabric, trim and factory base is for your product.

What does labour cost in each country?

Minimum wages are the clearest public comparison of labour cost, though factories pay above them and labour is only one part of a garment price. Fabric and trims matter as much as wages.

• Portugal: €1,073 a month on 1 July 2026, on Eurostat’s monthly basis.
• Turkey: €621 a month on 1 July 2026, on the same Eurostat basis. The euro value moves with the lira.
• Bangladesh: the garment sector minimum was set at Tk 12,500 a month in late November 2023, and a state wage review committee recommended a 9% annual increase in December 2024. At any recent exchange rate that is well below both European figures.

The gap is why Bangladesh wins on unit price for sewing-heavy basics made in volume. It is also why near-market factories tend to compete on speed, service and smaller runs rather than on price. For a careful buyer, the useful number is not the wage but the delivered cost of the finished garment, which is where duty and freight come in.

Duty into the EU: zero for all three, under different rules

For EU buyers, customs duty does not separate the three today, but the conditions behind each zero do.

• Portugal is an EU member state. Goods move inside the single market with no customs duty and no customs declaration.
• Turkey has been in a customs union with the EU since 1996 covering industrial products, textiles included. Goods in free circulation in Turkey move into the EU on an A.TR movement certificate without customs duty.
• Bangladesh exports to the EU duty-free and quota-free under Everything But Arms, provided origin rules are met and the exporter issues a REX statement on origin. Bangladesh leaves the UN’s least developed country category on 24 November 2026, and EBA continues through a three-year transition to November 2029. Our guide to LDC graduation sets out what happens after that.

So the EU duty picture is stable until 2029. After that, Bangladesh’s access depends on qualifying for another scheme, while Portugal and Turkey do not face the same question. A brand building a five-year sourcing plan for Europe should weigh that. Our page for EU brands covers the rest of the import rules.

Duty into the UK, and into Turkey itself

The UK is outside both the EU and the EU–Turkey customs union, so each route has its own agreement:

• From Portugal: the EU–UK Trade and Cooperation Agreement provides zero tariffs on goods that comply with its rules of origin.
• From Turkey: the UK–Turkey trade agreement has applied since 1 January 2021. GOV.UK says exporters must prove origin to claim its preferential rates, and that its product-specific rules were aligned with the Trade and Cooperation Agreement from 14 April 2021.
• From Bangladesh: the UK’s Developing Countries Trading Scheme gives duty-free access, which the UK has said continues for three years after graduation. Our page for UK brands covers the detail.

The trap with the two European routes is origin. A garment sewn in Portugal or Turkey is not automatically “originating” for UK duty. The rules are product-specific, and for clothing they can depend on where the fabric was made as well as where it was sewn. Ask your customs broker for the rule on your HS code before you assume zero.

If your company is based in Turkey, the comparison turns upside down. Clothing is excluded from Turkey’s preference scheme for Bangladesh, most apparel lines carry a 39% additional customs duty on top of the ordinary rate, and the reduced rate for least developed countries was abolished in 2020. Our Turkey market page sets out that position in full, with sources, and explains the cases where importing still works.

Transit time and lead time

This is where near sourcing earns its higher price. SEKO Logistics, a freight forwarder, publishes typical sea transit times from Bangladesh of about 22 to 30 days to the UK and Europe, depending on routing and transshipment, and about two to five days by air from Dhaka. Its guide also puts Bangladesh manufacturing at typically 60 to 120 days from order placement to shipment, depending on the product. That is an industry range, not a quote; every order is scheduled on its own.

Goods made in Portugal or Turkey reach European customers by road, in days rather than weeks at sea, and without a port or a container booking in between. That changes what you can do:

• Reorder a style that is selling within the same season, instead of guessing the whole season’s volume months in advance.
• Test a new style in a small quantity and repeat it only if it sells.
• Carry less stock, because the next delivery is close.

For a style that sells steadily all year, those advantages are worth less. The sea voyage is predictable, the order can be placed early, and the saving on each piece is paid on every unit.

What does each country make best?

The three are not interchangeable on product. According to İHKİB, knitted products (HS chapter 61) were 54% of Turkey’s apparel exports in 2025, with knitted clothing and women’s wear the two largest groups at 31.2% and 29.4%. Turkey’s largest markets were Germany, the Netherlands, Spain and the UK. Portugal’s clothing makers sit inside a wider textile industry that also exported €1.46 billion of textile materials in 2025, and its largest markets were Spain, France and Germany. Bangladesh’s strength is scale in cotton knitwear, fleece, denim and sweaters.

A split-sourcing model: core far, replenishment near

Split sourcing is not a theory. Gymshark’s published 2025 factory list names Tier 1 garment factories in Turkey, Romania, Portugal and the UK alongside Vietnam, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh. A smaller brand can use the same logic on a smaller scale:

1. Sort your styles by predictability. Continuity basics that sell every month go in one column; new and trend styles in the other.
2. Place the continuity styles far away, early. Order the season’s base volume from Bangladesh, with enough lead time for the sea voyage.
3. Keep a near-market partner for top-ups. When a colour or size sells out, repeat it close to the market rather than air-freighting from Asia.
4. Use one specification. The same tech pack, fabric weight and measurement chart for both sources, so a customer cannot tell which factory made their hoodie.
5. Compare delivered cost, not factory price. Put both routes through the same landed-cost sum, including freight, duty and the cost of carrying stock.

For small first runs of basics, a near-market factory is not the only option. Our small-run route makes from 100 pieces per style and colour in Bangladesh; for t-shirts in bulk, the minimum is 1,000 pieces per style.

When Bangladesh is the wrong choice

• You need stock in stores within weeks of deciding to make it. The sea voyage alone is three to four weeks.
• Your brand story is “made in Europe”. Only a European factory can give you that label honestly.
• Your customers are in Turkey, where the duty on Bangladeshi clothing is heavy.
• Every style is a test and nothing repeats. The unit saving never gets the chance to add up.

If none of those describes you, and your range has a core of styles that sell season after season, that core is where Bangladesh pays.

What to do next

Take two or three of your core styles and cost them both ways. Put a Bangladeshi FOB price and a near-market price through the landed cost calculator, adding freight and duty for your market. If the Bangladeshi route wins on the styles you can plan ahead, send us the tech packs through the contact page and tell us which styles you plan to replenish nearer home, so we can quote the core volume and match the specification.