Compliance and factory audits in Bangladesh

Ask for the one your largest customer accepts, because a second audit costs the factory time and money and rarely tells you more. European retailers most often ask for amfori BSCI, UK retailers for a Sedex SMETA report, and US retailers for WRAP; SA8000 is the most demanding and is valued by brands with a strong ethical position. Many buyers now also accept an SLCP verified assessment, which is designed to replace repeated brand audits. If you have no customer requirement yet, a recent amfori BSCI or SMETA audit with its findings closed is a sound starting point that most buyers recognise. Whatever you choose, ask for the full report, not just the certificate or grade, and check the audit ID with the body that issued it. We shortlist factories already holding the audit you need, so you are not paying for a new one.

Yes, and you should. Once we have shortlisted the factory for your product, we send the latest social audit report, its building-safety status, the relevant certificates with their numbers and the factory’s licences, before production starts. Some audit schemes share full reports only through their own platforms: amfori members can open BSCI reports on the amfori Sustainability Platform, and SMETA reports are shared through Sedex, so if your company is a member we can arrange access that way. If you are not, the factory can share the report directly, and the audit ID lets you confirm it is genuine. Read the findings and the dates, not only the grade. If anything in the report concerns you, raise it before production: that is the point at which a corrective action can still be agreed, or a different factory chosen, without delaying your order.

Three ways, all in writing and on the ground. First, your order is placed with a factory named to you, with its address, before production, and our agreement with that factory says no part of the order moves to another site without your written approval. Second, we inspect inline at that factory while your goods are being cut and sewn, so production that is not happening where it should be is noticed while it can still be stopped. Third, any process that genuinely happens elsewhere, such as printing, embroidery or washing, is named to you as a separate site, and its documents are shared like the main factory’s. You are also welcome to send your own auditor or a third-party inspector at any stage of production. Their findings go on the order file beside ours.

Directly, often not; indirectly, almost always. The EU due diligence directive now applies only to very large companies, from July 2029, and Germany’s LkSG to firms with at least 1,000 employees there. But if you sell to retailers above those thresholds, they must ask their suppliers the same questions, so the requests arrive with you. Two laws apply regardless of size. The US Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act applies to every importer, and goods with Xinjiang inputs can be detained at the border until origin is proved. The EU Forced Labour Regulation, from 14 December 2027, will allow products made with forced labour to be banned and withdrawn whoever sells them. For a small brand the practical answer is the same: a named factory, current audits and cotton origin records, which you should ask for on every order.

With records that trace the cotton from the bale to the finished garment, because under the US Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act the importer must prove it. Since 21 June 2022, goods made wholly or in part in Xinjiang, or by an entity on the UFLPA Entity List, are presumed to be made with forced labour and refused entry. Bangladesh imports most of the cotton it spins, so origin has to be shown, not assumed. The core file is a cotton origin declaration naming the growing country, bale-level records from the cotton merchant, yarn and fabric invoices from mill to factory, and production records tying fabric rolls to your cutting tickets. Screen every spinning and fabric mill against the Entity List, which grew to 187 entities on 3 August 2026. If CBP detains a shipment, the importer has 30 days to respond, and an exception needs clear and convincing evidence. We keep these records on the order file.

A social compliance audit is an on-site assessment of one factory’s working conditions against a code of conduct and local labour law, carried out by an independent audit firm. The auditor gathers evidence from three sources and cross-checks them: documents such as wage, working-hour and age records, a walk through the site looking at exits, alarms, chemical storage and machine guarding, and private interviews with workers the auditor chooses. An amfori BSCI audit rates the factory across 13 performance areas; a Sedex SMETA audit covers labour standards and health and safety, with environment and business ethics added in the 4-pillar version. The visit ends with a closing meeting and a list of findings to correct. What it cannot do is certify the building’s structure, which in Bangladesh is inspected separately, or see an order moved to another site. Read the findings, and check that the audit names the factory making your goods.

A corrective action plan is the factory’s written list of the audit’s findings, each with the action agreed, a deadline and, later, the evidence that it was fixed. Under amfori BSCI, a factory rated C, D or E must draw up its improvement plan within 60 days of the audit, and a follow-up audit takes place between two and twelve months after the full audit. A Sedex SMETA report grades each finding as business critical, critical, major or minor and ends with a corrective action plan in place of an overall score. Building-safety inspections work the same way: the International Accord publishes each covered factory’s plan and its remediation progress. Read each finding, its severity, the date and whether it was closed with evidence at a follow-up. A factory with a C and a closed plan is often a better choice than one with a B and open findings.

No, a small brand does not need to write its own code of conduct: adopting a recognised one tells a factory what you expect and matches the audits it already holds. The ETI Base Code, which Sedex SMETA audits are based on, has nine clauses founded on International Labour Organization conventions: employment is freely chosen, freedom of association is respected, working conditions are safe and hygienic, child labour is not used, living wages are paid, working hours are not excessive, there is no discrimination, regular employment is provided, and no harsh or inhumane treatment is allowed. The amfori Code of Conduct plays the same role for amfori BSCI audits. Name the code you adopt in your purchase order, add a clause that no part of the order moves to another site without your written approval, and ask for the audit report that tests the factory against it.

An announced audit takes place on a date the factory knows in advance, a semi-announced audit on an unknown day inside a window the factory has been told, and an unannounced audit with no notice. The less warning a factory has, the closer the audit is to a normal working day, so the announcement type is one of the first things to read on a report. amfori BSCI books semi-announced audits by default: the window must be at least four weeks long and start at least two weeks after the request. Sedex recommends semi-announced or unannounced SMETA audits unless there is a valid reason for an announced one, and WRAP-certified facilities remain subject to random unannounced assessments. For forced-labour due diligence, US Customs and Border Protection says audits should be unannounced and independent. The report states which type it was, so given two similar reports, prefer the one with less notice.

Four more come up, and each is proved by a different document. Building safety: factories that supply brands signed to the International Accord’s Bangladesh Safety Agreement are inspected for fire, electrical, structural and boiler safety by the RMG Sustainability Council (RSC), which carries out the agreement in Bangladesh, and the Accord’s public factory list shows each covered factory’s inspection reports and remediation progress. Environment: the Higg Facility Environmental Module (FEM) is a factory’s self-assessment of its energy use, greenhouse gas emissions, water and waste, checked by a Cascale-approved verifier either on site or off site, so ask for the verified module and which kind of verification it had. Supply-chain security: CTPAT is a voluntary US Customs programme whose foreign manufacturer members must be incorporated in Mexico or Canada, so a factory in Bangladesh cannot join it; if your US customer is a member, CTPAT’s criteria require it to check, by visits or questionnaires, that its overseas suppliers meet the programme’s security criteria, so expect a security questionnaire or a visit to the factory instead. And the legal floor: the Department of Inspection for Factories and Establishments (DIFE) enforces the Bangladesh Labour Act 2006 and the Bangladesh Labour Rules 2015, inspects factories on the spot and sets deadlines for fixing violations, so ask for the factory’s current licence and check that its address matches the building. Our certifications page lists each of these with how to verify it.

Yes, on the online portal of the Department of Inspection for Factories and Establishments (DIFE), called LIMA, the Labour Inspection Management Application. Its licence verification page returns a factory’s current status when you enter its licence or registration number, so ask the factory for that number and check it yourself rather than relying on a scanned copy. The same portal publishes a remediation tracking dashboard for the factories it follows, searchable by district, sector, name and registration number, which shows each factory’s inspection and corrective action plan records, its escalation status and its remediation progress; it can also be filtered by status, such as open, closed, relocated, inside an export processing zone or working with the Accord. The portal opens in Bengali, with a switch to English at the top of the page. Two cautions. A licence shows that the factory may operate, not that it meets your code of conduct, so it sits beside the social audit, not in place of it. And a licence held by a sister unit is not a licence for the building making your goods, so match the name and address to the factory named on your order.

They are two committees the Bangladesh Labour Act 2006 requires, and social audits commonly look at both. Every establishment with 50 or more workers must form a safety committee and make it work, in the way the labour rules set out; it tells the owner about the risks, accidents, dangerous occurrences and diseases it identifies (section 90A, as replaced by the Bangladesh Labour (Amendment) Act 2026). An establishment where at least 50 workers are normally employed must also form a participation committee of worker and management representatives (section 205). The workers’ representatives are elected from the workforce and may not be fewer than management’s, and where there is no trade union they may act for workers’ interests until one is formed; where a trade union exists, no participation committee is needed, and copies of a committee’s certificate and records can be obtained for the fee the government sets (section 205(13)). Ask for the record of the last committee election, the members’ names and the minutes of recent meetings, and read what the social audit found about each committee. A committee that exists only on paper, or whose worker members were picked by management rather than elected, is a finding to close before production, not a formality.