Clothing manufacturer in Bangladesh for Swedish brands

Import VAT on clothing from Bangladesh in Sweden: 25% moms, reported in your VAT return

Customs duty on Bangladeshi clothing is 0% under Everything But Arms, with a REX statement on origin; the EU-wide rules behind it, including what may change after the transition ends, are on our EU guide. What Sweden adds at the border is import VAT, mervärdesskatt or moms. Skatteverket, the Swedish Tax Agency, puts the standard rate at 25% on almost all goods and services and says the rate at import is the same as on a sale in Sweden. Clothing has no reduced rate, so children’s clothing pays 25% too.

The taxable amount is built in three parts, as Skatteverket sets out: the customs value shown on the customs invoice (tullräkning), plus the duty and any other state taxes or charges on it, plus the incidental costs you had between the place where the goods entered the EU and the place in Sweden where they finally arrive. The customs value itself follows Tullverket’s valuation guide, which matches the definition on our EU guide, and Tullverket’s own example is a ship bound for Gothenburg that calls at Rotterdam without unloading: Rotterdam is the place of entry, and only the freight to Rotterdam goes into the customs value. Unloading costs after arrival stay out. On an FOB purchase your freight and insurance to that port are added to the invoice price.

Who pays it is what makes Sweden different from most of the EU. Skatteverket’s rule is that a business registered for VAT that imports goods reports and pays the import VAT to Skatteverket, in its ordinary VAT return, and deducts it in the same return under the general rules for input VAT. For a VAT-registered brand the 25% is therefore a bookkeeping entry, not a payment at the border. A business that is not VAT-registered declares and pays the VAT to Tullverket, Swedish Customs, instead. If another company acts as importer of record, for example under a delivered duty paid sale, that company reports the VAT and you may not be able to deduct it, so agree who imports before you choose a shipping term.

A US dollar invoice is converted at Tullverket’s own rate, not the daily market rate: its valuation guide says the rates published by Nordea on the second-last Wednesday of a month are used for customs values throughout the following month, and the rates are published in Tulltaxan, Tullverket’s tariff tool. The krona figures on a real declaration will therefore differ slightly from the example below.

Landed cost of a pair of jeans from Bangladesh in Sweden, per piece: 0% or 12% duty

Take one pair of women’s cotton denim jeans, classified under 6204 62 31 90 and landed at Gothenburg. The goods value is an illustrative round number, US$12.00 a piece, not a quote and not our price. It is converted through the European Central Bank’s reference rates of 24 September 2026, US$1.1367 and SEK 11.2645 to the euro, which give SEK 9.9098 to the dollar and SEK 118.92 a piece. Sea freight and insurance to Gothenburg are an assumption of SEK 6.00 a piece, not a quote. The EU’s TARIC database, checked for imports from Bangladesh on 25 September 2026, gives this code 0% under Everything But Arms and a 12% third-country duty, which is what the same jeans would pay if Bangladesh had no preference once the transition ends, no earlier than about November 2032.

On 1,000 pieces the preference saves SEK 14,990 of duty. For an importer that cannot recover moms, the higher base adds another SEK 3,748 of VAT, so the gap at the port is SEK 18,738. A VAT-registered importer reports and deducts the moms in the same return, so its cost at the port is SEK 124.92 a piece at 0% duty and SEK 139.91 at 12%.

The table ends on the quay in Gothenburg. The customs broker’s fee, terminal charges and the truck to your warehouse come on top, and under Skatteverket’s rules the costs between the place of entry and the final destination in Sweden are added to the moms base as well. Our landed cost calculator adds freight, insurance, duty and clearance to your own price per piece, leaving moms out; confirm the final numbers with your customs broker.

Separate textile collection since 2025, and the data the 2028 scheme will need

Since 1 January 2025, textile waste in Sweden must be sorted out from other waste and collected separately, under chapter 3, section 2 of the waste ordinance (avfallsförordningen 2020:614). The ordinance defines textile waste as waste consisting of textile clothing, home textiles, interior textiles, textile bags and textile accessories. Municipalities collect it from households, while a business whose own operations produce textile waste is responsible for sorting it and seeing it handled in line with the waste hierarchy, according to Naturvårdsverket, the Swedish Environmental Protection Agency.

Sweden built the collection system first; the bill for it arrives with producer responsibility, which the section on Sweden’s textile EPR below traces from the 2020 proposal to the draft law of August 2026. The fee will be set per product placed on the Swedish market and eco-modulated against criteria such as durability and recyclability, and nothing about it is knowable to the last krona yet, so 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 after 13 November 2026, when Naturvårdsverket’s final proposal is due

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” are prohibited unless you can show recognised excellent environmental performance, and so are sustainability labels not based on a certification scheme or set by public authorities. 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. The factory is named to you in writing before production, with its certificates and audit reports, so you can verify the certificate numbers yourself; for organic or recycled claims, ask for the transaction certificate for your shipment as well. Our page on certified production sets out what each standard actually proves and where the thresholds sit.

For start-ups and small brands in Sweden: minimums and the first order

Our own orders start at 500 pieces per style and colour, which is also the minimum for T-shirts and hoodies. Denim, jackets, woven shirts, workwear and uniforms start at 2,000; underwear at 5,000 pieces and socks at 5,000 pairs; for every other category the exact minimum is confirmed on your quote. Orders below 500 pieces go through the small-run route on our low MOQ page, handled by our sister factory rather than through our own orders.

Sweden is easy on a small importer’s cash flow: once your company is registered for VAT, the 25% moms is reported and deducted in the same VAT return, so there is no VAT to pay at the border; before registration it is paid to Tullverket, so register before the first import. Two more Swedish tasks are yours before the first shipment: notifying Naturvårdsverket of your packaging and joining a producentansvarsorganisation, and, if your brand is outside the EU, naming an EU-established economic operator on the product, as our EU guide explains. What a first order needs, and what the quote states in writing, is on the EU guide’s first-order checklist.

• Minimum: 500 pieces per style and colour, higher in some categories
• VAT registration before the first import, so moms is reported and deducted in the return rather than paid to Tullverket
• Packaging notification to Naturvårdsverket and membership of a producentansvarsorganisation are the importer’s tasks, not the factory’s

Clothing labels for Sweden: fibre composition in Swedish

Fibre names and percentages follow the EU textile regulation, which our EU guide covers. Sweden’s addition is the language: Konsumentverket, the Swedish Consumer Agency, states that the label or marking must be in Swedish if the product is to be on the Swedish market, and that the fibre information must be visible to the consumer before purchase, online included, so the Swedish fibre names belong on your product pages as well as on the label.

One detail catches importers out: a product containing non-textile parts of animal origin, such as a leather patch on jeans or a horn button, must carry the words “Innehåller icke-textila delar av animaliskt ursprung”.

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, and check the finished label on the pre-production sample rather than on a screen proof before you approve it, because a label corrected after bulk is a relabelling job across every carton. The EU importer contact and product identifier that EU product safety rules require are on the EU guide.

• Fibre composition in Swedish
• The same fibre information visible on the product page before an online purchase
• “Innehåller icke-textila delar av animaliskt ursprung” where leather, horn or other animal parts are used
• The finished label approved on the pre-production sample, not a screen proof
• Care symbols and any Swedish care wording to your retailer’s specification

Packaging in Sweden: notify Naturvårdsverket and join a producentansvarsorganisation

Sweden’s packaging ordinance, förordning (2022:1274) om producentansvar för förpackningar, was rewritten from 12 August 2026 to sit under the EU packaging regulation, which our EU guide covers. Who is the producer now follows the EU definition, as Naturvårdsverket explains: for packaged products, the economic operator established in an EU country that makes the packaging available for the first time in that same country, whether as manufacturer, importer or distributor, and whether to businesses or straight to consumers. A Swedish brand that imports packed garments from Bangladesh is therefore the producer of the polybags, hang tags and cartons they arrive in. The factory in Bangladesh is not.

Three duties follow. Before making packaging available on the Swedish market, the producer must notify Naturvårdsverket, giving its name, contact details, organisation or tax number, which producer responsibility organisation it has engaged and on what basis it is the producer (chapter 4, section 5), and it must have engaged or provided an approved producentansvarsorganisation (chapter 4, section 1). Naturvårdsverket lists two approved organisations for packaging: Näringslivets Producentansvar i Sverige AB and TMResponsibility AB. A producer that is reporting-liable under the EU regulation then reports to Naturvårdsverket by 31 March each year the quantity of packaging it made available in Sweden in the previous calendar year, by category (chapter 11, section 1). A producer not established in Sweden may appoint a producer representative (producentombud) established in Sweden by written power of attorney to carry these duties (chapter 4, section 7).

Naturvårdsverket’s advice to companies on 10 August 2026 was to work out which role you hold, register as a producer, report under the new rules and join an approved organisation. The organisation’s fees depend on the material and weight of each packaging component, so put the weight of every polybag, tag and carton per style on the packing specification agreed at sampling, and keep it with your import file.

Shipping clothing from Bangladesh to Gothenburg

Swedish orders normally ship by sea from Chattogram to Gothenburg, or by air from Dhaka for urgent drops. The Port of Gothenburg describes itself as the biggest container port in Scandinavia: 934,000 containers passed through it in 2025, and around 57% of Sweden’s container trade is handled there, split evenly between exports and imports. On 28 August 2026 the port reported 462,000 TEU for the first half of 2026, in line with the same months of 2025, its record year, and said it is the only port in Sweden offering direct container services to and from Asia; the alternative is a feeder connection through a continental hub. Sailing times to Europe, and why a transshipment hub is where most late arrivals begin, are on our shipping page.

The routing changes your customs value. On a direct service the place of entry is Gothenburg; on a ship that calls at a continental port first, it is that port, as the import VAT section explains, so agree the service and the place of clearance with your forwarder before the first booking and keep the shipping schedule, which Tullverket accepts as proof of the first port of arrival.

If you also sell into Norway, remember it is a separate customs territory with its own clearance, whatever the map suggests; our Norway page covers it.

Textile EPR in Sweden: the 2020 proposal, the 2023 decision and the draft law of August 2026

Sweden nearly had a national scheme before the EU one. On 9 December 2020 a government inquiry published SOU 2020:72, proposing a Swedish producer responsibility for textiles that would guarantee separate collection of textiles for reuse and of textile waste for recycling, run through licensed collection systems. No ordinance followed. In summer 2023 the European Commission proposed making textile producer responsibility compulsory across the EU, and on 20 December 2023 the government chose a narrower step instead: municipalities must collect household textile waste separately from 1 January 2025, and, in the government’s words, the national rules would need to be reviewed again once the EU work was finished. The national scheme was, in effect, superseded by the EU one.

The EU rules arrived with Directive (EU) 2025/1892, in force since 16 October 2025. Naturvårdsverket delivered a mapping of its provisions to the government on 16 October 2025, and by a decision of 4 December 2025, announced on 11 December, the government tasked the agency with proposing how the directive should be written into Swedish law: draft legislation by 1 September 2026 and the full proposal, including sanctions, supervision and fees, by 13 November 2026. The assignment tells the agency not to go beyond the directive, to seek harmonisation with at least the other Nordic countries, and to leave out differentiated fees, a scheme for mattresses and measures to stimulate demand for reused material.

The interim report came on 27 August 2026. It proposes amendments to chapter 15 of the Environmental Code (miljöbalken), whose new numbering has applied since 1 July 2026, rather than the detailed rules themselves. The definition of a producer responsibility organisation is aligned with the directive. The government gains three new powers: to set rules on producers’ cost responsibility, on the cost of historic waste, and on a duty for a producer not established in Sweden, whether in another member state or a third country, that sells textiles or footwear by distance contract directly to end users in Sweden to appoint a producer representative (producentombud) established in Sweden. Online platforms and fulfilment providers would have to obtain proof of producer registration and an assurance of compliance before serving a seller. Naturvårdsverket’s stated aim is a close-to-the-directive implementation that uses no national leeway beyond what the directive requires, and it says the proposals create no direct obligations for producers yet; those come in the ordinance that follows the November proposal.

The dates that follow are the directive’s, as Naturvårdsverket sets them out: national law by June 2027, a working system by April 2028, and micro-enterprises brought in by April 2029. For a brand the practical reading is simple: nothing is registrable yet, the obligation is coming on a known date, and the fee will reward the choices you make at sampling. A factory in Bangladesh cannot be the producer, because it does not place the goods on the Swedish market; what it can supply is the fibre composition and weight per style, which you can ask for on every packing list.

Bangladesh’s share of Sweden’s clothing imports: 13.2% in 2025, second after China

Sweden imported €4,859.7 million of clothing (HS chapters 61 and 62) in 2025, according to Eurostat’s Comext database, 5.0% more than in 2024. China supplied €916.8 million, 18.9% of the total, and Bangladesh €643.5 million, 13.2%, up 15.0% on 2024. Türkiye (€240.9m), Norway (€148.6m), Vietnam (€137.1m), India (€122.7m) and Myanmar (€87.1m) followed among suppliers outside the EU; Pakistan (€65.2m) was eighth. Counting only imports from outside the EU, which Eurostat records by country of origin, Bangladesh’s share was 24.0% of €2,676.2 million.

Bangladesh leads in the basics Swedish brands buy most: 58.8% of Sweden’s non-EU imports of cotton T-shirts (6109 10) in 2025, 43.7% of cotton jumpers and sweatshirts (6110 20), 44.7% of women’s cotton trousers and shorts (6204 62), the heading that includes jeans, and 34.7% of the men’s equivalent (6203 42). About 45% of all Swedish clothing imports came from other EU member states; Eurostat records those by the country they were sent from, not where they were made, so that figure includes clothing made outside the EU and cleared elsewhere in the Union, for example at Rotterdam or Hamburg.

Figures for January to June 2026, which Eurostat does not treat as final until October 2027, show Swedish clothing imports from Bangladesh at €303.0 million, 7.9% below the same months of 2025, while all clothing imports fell 1.5% and those from outside the EU 1.8%. Seen from Bangladesh, Sweden bought US$772.25 million of clothing in FY2025–26 (July 2025 to June 2026), level with the year before at 0.05% growth, on Export Promotion Bureau figures published by BGMEA. Eurostat measures calendar-year euros on arrival and the EPB fiscal-year dollars on departure, over different twelve months, so neither the totals nor the growth rates line up; use each series for its own trend.

Working with us from Sweden

Bangladesh is four hours ahead of Sweden in summer and five in winter. We quote FOB Chattogram or DDP to your warehouse, in US dollars, with the REX statement on origin from the exporter so your goods clear duty-free, and we name the factory in writing before production; ask for the fibre and weight data Swedish buyers want with the shipping documents rather than on request.

• Factory named before production, with its address, audit report and Accord status
• Swedish fibre-composition label and importer details approved on the pre-production sample
• Fibre composition and garment weight per style for the 2028 scheme: ask for them on the packing list
• Transaction certificates where you claim organic or recycled fibre
• Quality checks on the line and the AQL final inspection report, then invoice, packing list, transport document and origin statement