Where clothing is made in Bangladesh

Most are in four districts: Dhaka, Gazipur, Narayanganj and Chattogram. That is the finding of Mapped in Bangladesh, a factory-by-factory census of the export garment industry, which listed 3,723 factories in March 2022 and found the remainder spread across seventeen other districts; its live database listed 3,320 when we checked on 18 September 2026. Three of the four form one belt around the capital. Dhaka city holds head offices, sample rooms, trims markets and laboratories, with sewing volume in Savar and Ashulia. Gazipur, to the north, is the largest manufacturing belt. Narayanganj, to the south-east, is a cluster of mid-size knit, hosiery and washing units. Chattogram, roughly 250 km away by road, is the port city and the second hub. Production is slowly spreading to districts such as Mymensingh. For your order the district is only a starting point: the factory’s machinery, audits and appetite for your quantity decide.

For knitwear at volume, start with Gazipur; for smaller knit runs, socks, hosiery and washed denim, Narayanganj; for wovens and outerwear, Chattogram has historically been strong. Those are tendencies, not rules. Gazipur’s composite mills knit, dye, cut and sew jersey, piqué and fleece on one site, which suits large repeat programmes. Narayanganj’s mid-size specialists sit close to the washing and dyeing plants that denim and garment-dyed pieces depend on. Chattogram’s factory base has leaned towards wovens and outerwear, though plenty of knitwear is made there too, and the Savar and Ashulia belt near Dhaka holds both knit and woven factories. What really decides the fit is machinery: flat-knitting for sweaters, a wash plant for denim, seam sealing for technical outerwear. So we search from your product and quantity, shortlist units in whichever district has them, and name the factory to you in writing, with its address and audits, before anything is cut.

It can, because of the road to the port rather than the sewing line. More than 90% of Bangladesh’s seaborne trade leaves through Chattogram port, which handled 3,402,762 TEUs in 2025, so goods made in Dhaka, Gazipur or Narayanganj first travel roughly 250 to 300 km by road, on a corridor carrying an entire country’s exports. From Gazipur, just reaching central Dhaka can take one to three hours in traffic. That inland leg is the stage of the schedule most likely to slip. Producing in Chattogram shrinks it to a local drive, but it does not shorten sewing or protect you from port congestion, customs checks or a rescheduled vessel: it buys schedule certainty, not speed. We plan inland transport as its own stage with a buffer, and for a fixed sailing we can quote a Chattogram option beside a Dhaka-belt one, so you see the risk difference and not just the price.

BEPZA, the government’s zone authority, lists eight operating export processing zones, and four of them are in the main garment districts. Its website, read on 27 September 2026, names Adamjee, Cumilla, Chattogram, Dhaka, Ishwardi, Karnaphuli, Mongla and Uttara EPZs, plus two BEPZA economic zones, with Patuakhali and Jashore EPZs under development. The four that matter most to clothing buyers are Chattogram EPZ, established in 1983 on 453 acres and the largest by cumulative exports; Dhaka EPZ at Savar, from 1993; Adamjee EPZ at Siddhirganj in Narayanganj, from 2006; and Karnaphuli EPZ in Chattogram, also from 2006. None of the eight is in Gazipur, whose capacity sits in factories outside the zones. A zone factory is a purpose-built exporter working under BEPZA’s own approvals and customs handling, which usually means steady volume programmes, routine export paperwork and little appetite for short runs. We shortlist zone and non-zone units side by side and name the one we recommend in writing.

The Bangladesh Textile Mills Association counts 1,883 member mills on its website, read on 1 October 2026: 530 yarn manufacturing mills, 1,008 fabric manufacturing mills and 345 dyeing, printing and finishing mills. A textile mill makes yarn or fabric. A garment factory cuts and sews that fabric into clothing, and a composite mill does both on one site. The difference matters because the fabric usually sets the schedule and much of the price. On the same page the association says local spinners meet around 100% of the yarn demand of knit garment exporters and about 60% of the yarn demand for woven garments, so a woven style is more likely to depend on imported yarn or cloth than a knit one. When you ask for a quote, tell us the fabric, weight and composition you want, and ask which mill will supply it and whether the cloth is local or imported.

Yes, but fewer than a hundred export factories sit outside Dhaka, Gazipur, Narayanganj and Chattogram. The Mapped in Bangladesh database listed 3,320 factories when we searched it district by district on 1 October 2026: 1,247 in Dhaka, 1,124 in Gazipur, 500 in Narayanganj and 359 in Chattogram, which leaves 90 everywhere else. Mymensingh is the largest of the rest, with 40 factories employing 116,245 people, so its plants are far bigger than the national norm. Narsingdi and Pabna had 10 each, Tangail and Manikganj 6 each and Cumilla 5. A factory outside the main belt can suit a large, steady programme, but check two things first: how far it is from the trims suppliers, laboratories and sample rooms around Dhaka, and how its goods reach Chattogram port. Send us the factory’s name and we will tell you which district it is in and what that means for your schedule.

Among the four main districts, Gazipur has by far the largest factories. In the Mapped in Bangladesh database, searched by district on 1 October 2026, Gazipur’s 1,124 factories employ 1,352,907 people, which works out at about 1,200 workers per factory. Dhaka’s 1,247 factories employ 867,108 and Narayanganj’s 500 employ 349,045, about 700 per factory in each case, and Chattogram’s 359 employ 218,490, about 610. The averages are our own arithmetic on the database’s totals. We have not found a public register that ranks the single largest factory, so treat any such claim with care. Size matters because a plant with thousands of workers is planned around long runs, while a unit with a few hundred can give a mid-size order a proper place on its lines. Our own orders start at 500 pieces per style and colour, so tell us your quantity for each and we will shortlist factories whose size fits it.

No, zone factories work under their own statute. The Bangladesh EPZ Labour Act 2019, Act No. II of 2019, covers employment, wages, health and safety in the zones, and its official English text was published on 27 July 2021. BEPZA’s website carries it alongside the EPZ Labour Rules 2022, a separate EPZ minimum wage structure from 2023 and an EPZ factory inspection checklist. Under the Act, inspection is carried out by officers appointed by BEPZA, workers organise through Workers’ Welfare Associations, which can be formed when at least 20% of a factory’s permanent workers apply, and disputes go to an EPZ Labour Court. Factories outside the zones come under the Bangladesh Labour Act 2006 instead. This changes which rules an audit is measured against, not whether one is needed. Ask whether the factory is inside a zone, and send us your code of conduct so that the audit report can be checked against it.