Clothing manufacturer in Bangladesh for Swedish brands

Duty: the EU rules apply

Sweden is an EU member, so clothing from Bangladesh enters duty-free under Everything But Arms, claimed with a statement on origin issued by the registered exporter under the REX system. Bangladesh graduates from Least Developed Country status on 24 November 2026 and EBA continues for three years after that, to November 2029.

Everything on our EU page about duty, origin, the General Product Safety Regulation and fibre labelling applies here too. The rest of this page is what is specific to Sweden.

Sweden separates textile waste, and has since January 2025

Since 1 January 2025, textile waste in Sweden must be sorted out and collected separately. The Swedish Environmental Protection Agency, Naturvårdsverket, explains the split: municipalities are responsible for collecting textile waste that is municipal waste from households and certain businesses, while companies such as textile manufacturers and wholesalers may be responsible for sorting, collecting and delivering the textile waste their own operations generate.

For a brand importing from Bangladesh, the immediate obligation is modest, but the direction is unmistakable. Sweden built the collection system first; the bill for it arrives with producer responsibility.

Producer responsibility is being written now

The revised EU Waste Framework Directive, Directive (EU) 2025/1892, entered into force on 16 October 2025 and makes extended producer responsibility for textiles and footwear mandatory across the EU, with 20 months to transpose and 30 months to have schemes running. Naturvårdsverket is working on the Swedish design under a government assignment and has published proposals for the legal changes needed.

What this means in practice is that producers will pay a fee per product placed on the Swedish market, eco-modulated against criteria such as durability and recyclability. Nothing about that is knowable to the last krona yet, and any supplier who quotes you a figure today is guessing. What you can do now costs nothing: record fibre composition and garment weight for every style, because every version of every scheme reports on exactly that data, and reconstructing it after the fact is expensive.

• Record fibre composition per style, accurate to the composition label
• Record garment weight per style and per size where it varies materially
• Keep the same data for packaging: polybags, hang tags and cartons
• Decide who your Swedish producer of record is, if you do not sell directly
• Re-check the position in 2027, when the Swedish law is in force

Swedish buyers ask for evidence, not adjectives

Sweden is a demanding retail market for material claims, and from 27 September 2026 the EU rules make that a legal matter rather than a cultural one: generic environmental claims such as “eco-friendly” and self-made sustainability labels are prohibited unless you can substantiate them. A Swedish retailer is likely to have been asking for the evidence long before the law required it.

That is a good fit for how we work. Certified organic or recycled production is arranged in certified mills and factories, the factory is named to you in writing, and you receive the certificate numbers to verify yourself, plus the transaction certificate for your shipment. Our page on certified production sets out what each standard actually proves and where the thresholds sit.

Labelling and language

Fibre composition follows EU Regulation (EU) No 1007/2011, using the approved fibre names with accurate percentages. Care symbols are the norm, and Swedish retailers will usually specify their own label format, including Swedish-language care wording where they want it.

Send us your retailer’s label specification at sampling. We check the finished label on the pre-production sample rather than on a screen proof, because a label corrected after bulk is a relabelling job across every carton.

Shipping and landed cost

Swedish orders normally ship by sea from Chattogram to a northern European port, with onward road or rail, or by air from Dhaka for urgent drops. With duty at zero while EBA holds, your landed cost is goods, freight, insurance, clearance and VAT.

Ask us for FOB and DDP side by side and run both through our landed cost calculator with a real freight quote. If you also sell into Norway or Switzerland, remember those are separate customs territories with their own clearances, whatever the map suggests.

The new EU packaging rules already apply

The Packaging and Packaging Waste Regulation, Regulation (EU) 2025/40, has applied since 12 August 2026, replacing the 1994 packaging directive with one directly applicable rulebook for all packaging placed on the EU market. For a clothing brand that means polybags, hang tags, tissue, cartons and mailing bags, not just the garment.

The obligations arrive in stages. Restrictions on PFAS in food-contact packaging applied immediately, a harmonised packaging labelling system follows from 2028, and from 2030 come limits on empty space, restrictions on certain single-use plastic packaging, reuse targets, mandatory recycled content in new plastic packaging, and a requirement that all packaging be recyclable.

Nothing here demands panic this season, and all of it rewards decisions taken at sampling rather than after the first shipment: right-sized cartons, recycled-content polybags, paper tags without plastic fixings, and the weight of each packaging component recorded per style. We quote those alternatives during development, because changing packaging later means changing artwork, cost and often the carton plan.