Clothing manufacturer in Bangladesh for Bulgarian brands

Euro pricing since January 2026

Bulgaria adopted the euro on 1 January 2026 as the twenty-first member of the euro area, at the fixed rate of 1.95583 lev per euro; dual pricing in lev and euro was mandatory from 8 August 2025 to 8 August 2026. For an importer the change is practical: customs values, duties, import VAT, invoices and customs guarantees are now in euro, so a quote from us in euro needs no conversion on the Bulgarian side and no currency risk between order and delivery.

20% VAT

Bulgaria’s standard VAT rate is 20%, with a reduced rate of 9% for a short list of goods and services that does not include clothing.

Labels in Bulgarian

Article 9 of Bulgaria’s Consumer Protection Act requires products to be labelled in Bulgarian, or in several languages including Bulgarian, and the label must name the producer and, for imports, the importer, the type of product and its essential characteristics, in a form that is clear, accessible and not misleading. Regulation (EU) No 1007/2011 adds the fibre composition in the official language, so the sewn-in label carries fibre content and care instructions in Bulgarian, in Cyrillic, with other languages allowed alongside. Parliament approved amendments to the act in January 2026 to align it with the General Product Safety Regulation, which requires an EU responsible person named on the product or its packaging.

• Fibre composition by percentage, in Bulgarian (Cyrillic)
• Care instructions in Bulgarian, as symbols with text
• Country of origin: Bangladesh
• Producer and importer names, and the EU responsible person’s address
• Size in the convention your customers expect

Ports, Thessaloniki and the open border

Burgas is Bulgaria’s largest port, with about 19 million tonnes of cargo in 2024 and roughly 200,000 containers; Varna handled about 11 million tonnes, with 150,000 to 200,000 containers a year, and its container hub is Varna West, 30 km inland from the city, with a maximum draught of 11.2 m and 3,430 m of quay. Maersk discharges Bulgarian imports at Varna West as its primary port and at Burgas West, and also offers discharge at Thessaloniki in Greece with customs transit to Bulgaria arranged by the line. That third option became easier on 1 January 2025, when Bulgaria became a full Schengen member and checks at its internal land borders ended; before that, hauliers reported waits of up to 20 hours at Bulgarian and Romanian crossings. The border with Turkey remains an external EU border. Cargo from Chattogram transships in Asia or the eastern Mediterranean onto a Black Sea or Aegean service; we state the routing and the ship date on each order.

• Varna West: the container hub, 11.2 m draught, primary Maersk discharge port
• Burgas West: the largest port by tonnage, second discharge option
• Thessaloniki: discharge in Greece, customs transit by road across an internal Schengen border
• Air freight into Sofia when a reorder cannot wait

A garment-making country that also imports

Bulgaria exported US$576 million of knitted and US$655 million of woven apparel in 2025, mostly to Germany, Italy and France, and its textile, apparel and leather association counted 57,252 people employed in the sector in September 2025, down 10 to 11% in a year, with contractor prices described as still at 2018–2019 levels. That is the context for Bangladeshi sourcing here: Bulgarian factories make tailored and quick-turn garments for European brands, and Bulgarian brands and retailers buy volume basics, knitwear and jersey from Bangladesh, where those categories are made at a price Bulgarian labour cannot match. A Bulgarian manufacturer can also place its own basics with us and keep its lines for the work that pays.

Textile waste: collection now, producer fees by 2028

EU rules required separate collection of textiles from 1 January 2025. In Bulgaria the obligation sits in a bill amending the Waste Management Act before the National Assembly, an ordinance on footwear and textile waste is still to be adopted, and there is no producer-responsibility scheme for textiles yet; collection relies on partnerships between companies and municipalities, which gathered about 6,500 tonnes in 2023, more than 8,000 tonnes in 2024 and more than 6,000 tonnes by the end of September 2025. The revised Waste Framework Directive, in force since 16 October 2025, gives member states until 17 April 2028 to have a textile and footwear scheme running, funded by producer fees per product placed on the market. We record garment weight and quantity per style on every order file so the first declaration can be made from records.

Working with us from Bulgaria

For a Bulgarian order we prepare the Cyrillic label, the REX statement for duty-free entry, and the packaging and garment weights the waste schemes will ask for. A Bulgarian manufacturer placing basics with us can have them labelled under its own brand and delivered to its own warehouse, next to the goods it sews itself. Bulgaria has no embassy in Dhaka and Bangladesh covers Bulgaria from Bucharest, which affects visas and legalisations, not trade; bilateral trade was US$221.5 million in 2025 on the Bulgarian foreign ministry’s figures.