12 Sep Bangladesh Factory Fire: What Every U.S. Brand With Overseas Suppliers Needs To Know Now
The blaze that erupted on Saturday at Bangladesh’s Tampaco Foils Ltd. factory, killing 31 people and injuring others, is bringing renewed focus on factory safety for one of the world’s leading garment exporters as well as other sourcing hot spots. (Tampaco Foils provides packaging materials for tobacco and food and drink products for companies including Nestle Bangledash and Nabisco Biscuit & Bread Factory Ltd.)
Saturday’s accident comes three years after the collapse of Bangledash’s Rana Plaza building, which claimed more than 1,100 lives and was the deadliest industrial disaster in the history of the garment industry.
Since the Ready Made Garments (RMG) sector is the biggest earner of foreign currency in the country, factory safety in the nation’s garment center is understandably a major concern — in 2012, 112 workers died in another fire at a garment factory just outside the country’s capital.