Planning to conduct in-person training in simplified manner from Q1 2022
Clean Globe is a global certification, verification, and training provider headquartered in Darwin, Australia. Sustainability certification is the mainstream of its services. In an interview with Fibre2Fashion, Mahesh Nabadawewa, Head of Operations of Clean Globe, spoke in depth about the certification and verification industry, challenges textile companies face while implementing the standards, and Clean Globe’s competitive advantages over other certification companies.
How big is the certification and verification industry as of date? How is this industry poised to grow in the future?
As most of the product and service claims are voluntary, certification and verification bring value for winning the market and enhancing the brand value. So, the demand for certification, and verification are a rising trend.
“Sustainability” concerns every part of life from now to the future. That creates general people seek for the best choices today than ever before. Simultaneously, authorities leverage policies, laws, and rules to ensure the claims. Unlike earlier, no product or service can remain without being verified or certified in the future. So, the professional certification and verification industry has enormous opportunities in the future.
What kind of resources and plans do you have for your Textile Exchange and Global Organic Textile Standard (GOTS) training programmes in the future?
As a team, we have many colleagues of over a decade and another team of over 10-5 years of experience in certification and verification in the textile industry, particularly in Textile Exchange and GOTS. So, we are planning to conduct webinars and in-person training in a simplified manner from the first quarter of 2022.
Which new products you may be coming up in the future for the textile industry and what are the areas they will cover?
Rather than being another conventional certification body, we are researching to enhance the productivity of the audit and verification process. Throughout our experience, we observe that current inspectors are overloaded with data collecting and long report writing in a limited period. This restless and fatigue job naturally avoids them from doing in-depth evaluations. Eventually, evaluation is nothing beyond data collection as many certification bodies practice today. Our comprehensive process re-engineering includes pre, onsite, and post-assessment stages like risk assessment of each stage. Aggregated data from each assessment stage gives direction to thorough evaluation at the next stage. Ultimately the decision and re-evaluation plan can be made quite objectively. Empowering inspection and evaluation personnel with the right knowledge and a well-designed digital platform are also under this project. Many other exciting projects are to be launched interacting with clients and their buyers as well.
Which are the industries you cater to and which of them has the greatest application of your certifications?
Textile and apparel have the most complicated supply chain where we get most of our businesses and at the same time other industries such as footwear, packaging, jewellery etc we have been successfully penetrating. Also, we have been approached by many packaging companies in Australia, where recycled content obligations come along with 2025 National packaging targets.
Which countries are leading the way in getting the most certifications with respect to their textile industries?
We are currently very much active especially in the Asian countries including Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Thailand, Indonesia in certification of processing and production sites. Also, we have been getting inquiries from many Australian and New Zealand brands and distributors. In the upcoming year, we will be reaching out to many countries actively--Turkey, Germany, the United States, Canada, Morocco, and Pakistan are some of them.
What are the competitive advantage(s) of your organisation for companies to select it as their certification provider?
tandards are usually complex with several requirements. If your certification body is unable to address the requirements related to your business, and direct you to the correct options, you will end up spending unwanted fees, delaying or denying certification, and losing business opportunities. In this sense, our team has over 50 years of cumulative experience in the certification, particularly in Textile Exchange and GOTS, and we designed a system based on many of the lessons we learned individually in the past. Our service is designed to be “LEAN” by:
1. Select the right options
2. Fewer repetitions
3. Reduce non-value-added processes such as unwanted data filling
4. More attention on the value-added process
5. Less waiting time.
6. Ultimately, increases the productivity and efficiency of the process.
What are your goals as a company for the next 5 years?
We always work hard to materialise our vision and mission; be the most attractive service provider by client-focused services while keeping our employees happy in the sector. In five years, we don’t want to be the biggest in volume but to achieve a level that most professional companies seek services from us and the most competent people join us.
What are the main challenges that textile and apparel companies face when it comes to checking standards, verification, and compliances in general? What are the possible solutions?
Industries are investing considerable resources to achieve and maintain the expected levels of the standards. Meeting the multiple parameters of different buyers and standards create ambiguity within the industries. That draws out the enthusiasm of organisations to take right and appropriate actions at their places. So, it’s quite important to harmonise the standards and recognise each other rather than competing against each other. This allows for allocating resources for the real development of the organisations.
Did you bring any change in your certification and verification processes amidst the pandemic to make the processes faster and easier for your clients?
As we have kicked off our operations within the pandemic, all the processes have been designed considering the worst-case scenario regardless of the pandemic situation. We perform our evaluation and certification activities without compromising on integrity norms of accreditation standards and scheme requirements but in a much efficient manner.
Published on: 04/01/2022
DISCLAIMER: All views and opinions expressed in this column are solely of the interviewee, and they do not reflect in any way the opinion of Fibre2Fashion.com.
