Finnish clothing manufacturers increasingly rely on Chinese factories
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The manufacture of Finnish clothing is increasingly taking place in Asian countries; at present, only one tenth of clothes sold in Finland are produced in this country.
China, which has the world's largest textile industry, has grabbed the lion's share of the business. The industry employs about 19 million Chinese, and up to 100 million are believed to be involved in the production of raw materials for the industry.
No other country exports as much clothing to Finland as China. According to figures put out by Finnish Customs, China accounted for 28.8 per cent of clothing imports to Finland. The real figure is estimated at about 35 per cent, because many garments imported from other countries, such as Sweden and Denmark, are actually manufactured in China.
In 2005 clothing imports from China were estimated at a value of EUR 317.4 million. Last year imports slowed, because the European Union imposed import quotas on a number of products.
One of the companies to experience massive expansion has been the Reima Group, which has its head offices in the Finnish city of Kankaanpää.
According to a report by the FinnWatch organisation, 95 percent of the clothing produced by the Reima Group (RTO Holding) are produced in Asia, mostly in China. It's line of Tutta baby clothing have been included in the maternity packages offered by the Social Insurance Institution (KELA) to new mothers in Finland.
Nearly all Tutta clothes are produced at the Reima factory in the city of Deqing in Zhejiang province in the east of China.
Chinese and Finnish flags fly on the flagpoles outside the knitwear factory, which employs about 250 people and manufactures about 1.2 million garments a year. They are all sold in Finland and other European countries.
"The designs and the patterns come from Finland. We simply follow orders", says Shen Yunglan, Reima's main representative in China.
Clothing manufacture at the Reima factory begins when cotton yarn is knitted into cloth and dyed. It is then sewed into garments in a massive factory building under bright lights. All of the women in the factory wear identical brown coats.
Seamstress Ni Bicai is working on a Tutta playsuit, which is part of a consignment going to KELA. She gets 0.3 yuan, or three euro-cents for one garment.
"I work for eight hours a day and usually make 150 of them", Ni says.
This amounts to an hourly wage of about EUR 0.60, and a monthly wage of about EUR 90.
A red banner on the wall of the factory building urges production units to compete with each other in quality and efficiency.
"We observe the Chinese labour law and its requirements on working hours and minimum wage. It is also used as a basis for the pay system", says Dong Yingjian, the director f the factory.
Individual factory workers say that they earn between 800 and 1,000 yuan, or EUR 80 - 100, without overtime. The minimum wage in the area is set by the government at just 630 yuan.
Cheap labour has brought most of the production of the Reima Group to China. It now has twice as many workers at its factories than when it began ten years ago.
In a few years, Reima has also acquired half a dozen subcontractors in China. The company's clothes and materials for the clothes are also produced in Vietnam, Sri Lanka, South Korea, and Taiwan. Nearly all of Reima's clothes come from Asia.
Independent labour unions are not permitted in China, which means that enforcing workers' rights is up to the management alone. FinnWatch says in its recent report, that few Finnish textile manufacturers commission reports on workers' working conditions.
Helsingin Sanomat
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| 17.1.2007 - TODAY |
 Finnish clothing manufacturers increasingly rely on Chinese factories
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