Clothing manufacturer in Bangladesh for Maltese brands

The Malta Freeport: a hub on the main shipping lane

The Malta Freeport at Marsaxlokk handled 2.87 million TEU in 2025, 2.86 million in 2024 and 2.80 million in 2023, from 1,495 ship calls in 2025. It has capacity for 3.6 million TEU, planned to rise to 4.0 million, and its terminals take ships of up to 24,000 TEU, the largest in service. More than 96% of its traffic is transshipment: it connects to over 110 ports, 55 of them in the Mediterranean, and a ship on the Gibraltar–Suez route deviates only six nautical miles to call there. Its shareholders are Terminal Link, which is owned by CMA CGM and China Merchants Port, alongside CMA CGM, China Merchants Port and the Yildirim Group.

For a Maltese importer that means the island is not at the end of a long feeder chain, as the Baltic states are; it sits on the route most Asia–Europe cargo already sails. The Freeport describes itself as the main port providing local businesses with regular network connections. Whether a given container lands at the Freeport or at the Grand Harbour in Valletta depends on the line, and we could not confirm a general rule, so we state the port of discharge on each booking. Sea freight from Chattogram to the central Mediterranean takes roughly 22 to 30 days before customs, and air freight into Malta two to five days.

18% VAT

Malta’s standard VAT rate is 18%, with reduced rates of 7% and 5%, on the European Commission’s VAT table for member states. We could not open the Maltese tax authority’s own pages to confirm how clothing is treated, so we state the standard rate and recommend your accountant confirm it for your products before you price; for most garments the standard rate is the working assumption. Our DDP quotes show duty, freight and VAT as separate lines.

Labels: two official languages

Regulation (EU) No 1007/2011 requires the fibre composition on a textile label to be in the official language of the country where it is sold. Malta has two official languages, Maltese and English. We could not find a Maltese rule, or an official statement from the Malta Competition and Consumer Affairs Authority, saying whether English alone satisfies the regulation for textiles, and a US government guide to Maltese labelling names the language requirement only for chemicals, cosmetics, food, detergents and biocides. We will not assert a rule we have not read, so our advice is to confirm the language with your compliance adviser before the first order; we then prepare the artwork to that answer, check it and keep it on file so reorders match.

• Fibre composition by percentage, in the language your adviser confirms
• Care instructions as symbols with text
• Country of origin: Bangladesh

Packaging: GreenPak and the recovery obligation

Importers, producers and anyone trading packaged goods in Malta are required by law to recover and recycle their packaging waste. GreenPak, a cooperative founded in 2004, takes over that obligation for its members and keeps them in line with the Environment and Resources Authority; a compliance firm reports that a second scheme, Green MT, is also approved, which we have not confirmed from a primary source. For a clothing importer the packaging is polybags, cartons, hangers and swing tags, reported by material and weight, and we supply those weights on every packing list.

Tourism, and the clothing it sells

Malta received 4,022,310 inbound tourists in 2025, up 12.9% on 2024, who stayed 25.4 million nights and spent €3.9 billion, up 18.6%, according to National Statistics Office figures reported in the Maltese press. On an island of about half a million residents that is the largest single driver of clothing demand: beachwear, resort wear, tees and caps sold in tourist retail, and uniforms and branded clothing for hotels, restaurants, dive schools and tour operators. Branded international retail is also present; the Tommy Hilfiger store in St Julian’s, for example, is run by a local operator. A summer range from Bangladesh is sampled in the autumn and produced over the winter, and a mid-season top-up goes by air.

Textile waste: bring points now, producer fees by 2028

Across the EU, separate collection of used textiles has been required since 2025. In Malta, textiles can be taken to low-density bring points and to civic amenity sites, and the European Environment Agency records that Malta reused 250 tonnes of textiles in 2021. The revised Waste Framework Directive, in force since 16 October 2025, requires every member state to run a producer-responsibility scheme for textiles and footwear within 30 months, so around April 2028. No Maltese textile scheme had been published when we checked, so this page describes no fees.

Working with us from Malta

For a Maltese order we prepare the label in the language your adviser confirms, the REX statement for duty-free entry, and packaging weights for your GreenPak or other scheme report. Tell us whether the order is a uniform programme or a retail range: the first is planned for repeat orders in matching colours, the second for one season.