BTT: Intertek is a leading quality and safety assurance organization, which is serving for various industry sectors. Can you please give us a brief idea on Intertek’s structure, its services and your role in Intertek?

Mr. Dilip: Intertek is the industry leader with more than 26,000 people in 1,000 locations in over 100 countries serving for Testing, Inspection, Certification and other quality assurance requirements of businesses. Whether your business is local or global, we can ensure your products meet quality, health, environmental, safety, and social accountability standards for virtually any market around the world.  For more than 100 years, companies around the world have depended on Intertek to ensure the quality and safety of their products, processes and systems.

We serve to various industry sectors viz., Aerospace & Automotive, Building Products, Chemicals,

Consumer Goods & Retail, Electrical & Electronic, Energy,  Food & Agriculture, Government & Institutions, Industrial & Manufacturing, IT & Telecoms, Medical & Pharmaceutical, Minerals, Textiles, Apparel & Footwear, Toys, Games & Hardlines.

I handle consumer goods division and am responsible for India and Bangladesh operations as a Regional Director. Consumer goods division covers industry sectors such as Textiles & Apparels, Home Furnishings, Leather & Footwear, Hardlines, Toys & Juvenile Products, Food, Cosmetics, Furniture, Luggage and Accessories such as hand bags, jewelry, sunglasses etc.

Intertek Consumer goods, India has about 800 employees with 4 offices in Gurgaon, Mumbai, Bangalore and Tirupur. Recently we have set-up a state-of-the art laboratory with highly sophisticated equipments for Food testing in New Delhi. In Bangladesh, we started our inspection and auditing services in the year 2000 and testing in the year 2004 and currently have about 300 employees. We are expanding our operations in Bangladesh by opening a laboratory in Chittagong in early 2011.

BTT: How your services benefit the companies?

Mr. Dilip: We go beyond testing, inspecting and certifying products; we help customers improve performance, gain efficiencies in manufacturing and logistics, overcome market constraints, and reduce risk in global supply chain.  We hold extensive global accreditations, recognitions, and agreements, and our knowledge of and expertise in overcoming regulatory, market, and supply chain hurdles is unrivaled. We’ve earned a reputation for helping our customers increase the value of their products, gain competitive advantage, and develop trusted brands.

In fact, we act as a bridge between buyer and supplier in respect of risk management. We ensure the products meet the buyers’ requirements in quality and safety in accordance with international standards and test methods. Our team of well qualified and trained professionals, with strong technical expertise, strives to minimize risk thereby protecting the manufacturers as well by avoiding shipping of faulty or inferior quality merchandise. This helps to ensure the right quality goods are received by the retailers and in turn protects their brand reputation. To ensure the products are of consistent quality for products sourced from various parts of the world, we adopt globally accepted test procedures and harmonized Standard Operating Procedure (SOP).

In a very important stage of supply chain, if any company / buyer would like to source any product form a particular country, they go to export promotion bureau and try to get information searching different directories and all exporters, but indeed it is not possible to select factories from the huge database. Our services help in identifying the right factory for those specific buyers. We never recommend that this factory is good or that vendor is bad but we do analyze based on the requirements.

In the supply chain we first assess a particular vendor is in compliance with the global requirement of the brand and other social compliance aspects. To begin with, we do social compliance audits as per buyer’s Code of Conduct (CoC) as well local legal requisites.  This is important to protect their brand and to make sure that their products are being manufactured in an ethically good & legally compliant factory. After getting the certificates as per the buyer’s protocol we do the technical audits to check whether the manufacturer has technical capabilities and expertise to execute the order satisfactorily and report our finding in the technical audit report. This helps the buyer in decision making whether to use any facility to place an order for producing their merchandise.

Upon placing the order, we test the fabrics and accessories prior to production, test the garments during production and when shipment is ready we inspect the finished consignment, to safeguard the shipment of flawless goods and as per requirements. We are not biasing any commercial decision nor suggesting them for what price they should buy.

BTT: What is the main focus of the audits for factory selection stage?

Mr. Dilip:In the step of selecting the factories, we assess to ensure an ethical manufacturing environment is in place. It is to ensure proper implementation of protocol to meet legal requirements of a specific plant. These obligations can be different from country to country but should be followed properly as per the requirements of local law and Code of Conduct of the brands. The buyers do not impose any thing additional.

BTT: Do you have any assessed rating system for existing factories? For the same factory do we need to do the assessment several times for several buyers?

Mr. Dilip:In respect to multiple audits every factory when operating in a global arena, they have to compliant with the buyer’s requirements. There is a possibility that it could be common code of conduct and there is a possibility that some of the brand can be very particular about their focus. They want to see their total manufacturing base in similar way and they select particular set of code of conducts. They have certain broad guidelines to comply with. For this Intertek has recently launched a uniform assessment system called as “Workplace Conditions Assessments” (WCA) covering almost all aspects of social compliance audit requirements. This is in accordance with the local law and covers the code of conduct for almost all buyers’ Code of Conduct. By carrying out audits based on WCA, the hassle of multiple audits of same facility could be avoided.

BTT: So how do you get the requirements of social compliance audit and technical audits?

Mr. Dilip:Most global clients already have designed their own manual & SC requisites. They give us their protocol because every brand has its own specialties and we are supporting them in their requirements. We are the service providing company wherever they need us we are there. We do audits based on industry programmes such as WRAP, BSCI, SA 8000 etc. We too have extensively listed out the assessment criteria in WCA audit procedure and we can provide a standard practices if any customer wants.

We can do these assessments even for the new factories. They take the self audits and obtain certification in order to attract the buyers’ attention and bag orders. It is not always that buyer identifies the vendors even the vendors has to identify the buyer which very important to have good orders. These certificates help the vendors to promote their own facilities and products. These certifications help for value addition to get buyers’ confidence.

BTT: So in that case what is Intertek certificate called?

Mr. Dilip:There are certain self certifications programs we have own Intertek Certification Marks and certification programmes. Intertek has developed the next generation in Auditing tools to help Manufacturers, Brands and Retailers better measure performance, communicate results and improve the factory conditions & performance against industry benchmarks.

Our new services and certifications aims towards covering all aspects of the supply chain as marked against each programmes:

• Workplace Condition Assessment (WCA): Covers Social Compliance requisites.



• Think Green Initiative (TGI) : Covers Environment Management System & assess the facility based on important modules such as air, water, noise pollutions, energy conservation, legal requirements and sustainable production scenario.



• Global Security Verification (GSV) : Addresses Security aspects of products and facilities.



• Mill Qualification Program (MQP)  : Ensures Fabric Quality parameters and production standards.



• Supplier Qualification Program (SQP) : Ensures garment Quality characteristics and technical capabilities of production facilities.

In technical audits, we focus on technical competency, quality assurance, product range which can give a complete picture of the standard of the industry. We see their management system, technical support systems. For every order there is a certain shipment date and we also check the capability of the manufacturer if he can meet the dates properly. Every brand has its own product range. For that particular product range they can ask for this type of assessments but not for single order basis.

BTT: You were telling about similar controlling in the quality parameters, normally we know that

Quality parameters depend on the buyer and it varies buyer to buyer and also country to country. Can you explain how this is ensured?

Mr. Dilip: For any product there are two major areas to focus on, viz., Performance criteria and Regulatory requirements. Depending on the destination country such as Europe, United States, Japan, Canada etc we need to follow the standards and specifications. There are British Standards, Japanese Standards, Canadian Standards, US Standards, EU Standards, and with in the country also there are customers who as understood their own needs and their consumer needs, they also evolve like Marks & Spencer, Next, TESCO, Target etc. So they have different segmentation for their customers. There are high end segment as well as low end segment. So they have different stringent quality requirements of their different segments. Based on the segment, the limit of tolerance varies. So they have designed their own quality manuals. We offer our services in drafting quality manuals for some clients, based on the country of destination. Some of the method we have developed could be similar to ISO or AATCC, but we match those with customer needs. We focus on the end use and other requirements and suggest some modification according to that.

BTT: So in testing area you are working as a partner of the buyers, so what is the system all the

Manufacturers of that particular buyer should be tested by you or other third party testing services can be taken?

Mr. Dilip: Yes they can be tested by the others also. We are in the service industry and any body can offer the same services. But there are leading players and there could be medium type companies. We are one the leading global players in this field. In that perspective, some of the retailers can choose us to work them and hence have accredited us. They came forward and say can develop quality manual from them and we help them in that technical support. So it’s the choice of the buyer. But not always we are working only with the buyers. Now we are focusing on the domestic market also. The Indian domestic market is getting organized now. There are some domestic brands who also want to follow the similar pattern of quality assurance like that of international brands and retailers. Domestic brands and industries play a very important role now-a-days and will get much shaped up in the forthcoming years. So we are in the process of developing quality manuals for local brands also like we did for Madura Garment, Lifestyle, etc. We are not only partners for buyers, but for the manufacturers too.

BTT: What do you think about Bangladesh Local Market?

Mr. Dilip: It will grow definitely. You know one survey revealed that in twenty years back in India, people living outside the city and middle city the fashion requirements were totally different. But now with the media explosion, the difference in choice changed drastically. Now the brand image is growing up and they are making the consumers so choosy! Young generation is much more aware of brands which are going to help any industry to grow and to have a revolution. So it may not be that big today but definitely it will be a big factor in the years to come.

BTT: From Bangladesh I think Global brands can be produced also. And India can be a good country to start for any Bangladeshi brand and some Bangladeshi brand has started it also.

Mr. Dilip: Lot of retailers is sourcing from Bangladesh because of competitive advantages like pricing, duty free access of Bangladeshi garments to India. They found that if America and Germany can buy from Bangladesh why we don’t. Because they are finding it cost comparative firstly and secondly because of custom duty advantage. Now in India only 4% retail is organized in next five years it may grow to 18%, which will be a very big market. With in this South East region Bangladesh is going to be a hub especially in the garments area. The reason is it is very good in the last stages of manufacturing. The textile industries play very prominent role here. And even government also focusing this sector and taking lots of initiatives. The young entrepreneurs and well educated young generation will bring a very different growth level in future which is called Gen Next. New markets like Middle East, China can be explored and focused. Even China is importing some garments from other countries including Bangladesh and interestingly their quality standard is very stringent. So those brands are focusing on the demand of the global consumers. They can not only focus on the behavior of the local people but they have to consider the tastes of all the people where they have the stores.

BTT: How the business volume of Intertek and what is the contribution of Textile & Garment Industry in total Intertek business?

Mr. Dilip: We are one of Fortune 100 companies. It is a UK based company and we are listed in London Stock Exchange. We already have achieved revenue level of 100 billion dollar. So it is one of top 100 companies of the world. We focus on entire consumer goods arena, not just textiles & garments. Consumer goods contribute over 30% in Intertek total business. However, textiles & garment sector is the leader in the consumer goods division.

BTT: How Intertek help in improving quality and safety situations in Bangladesh?

Mr. Dilip: We regularly organize technical seminars, training programmes, some customized program to create awareness on latest developments, update the industry news to all the stakeholders.  We interact with the students of textile & fashion institutes & universities and give them some orientation right from of the beginning they can understand the global quality practices. We arrange for lab visits and clarify their doubts about quality assurance systems; thereby Intertek helps the students in getting practical exposure.