India's PDS Group's businesses focused on sustainability in 2021

PDS Manufacturing is leading the way in the group with its ‘Respect Water’ initiatives, which range from water use reduction through the use of automatic taps, to rainwater harvesting for the flushing of toilets, to the excess steam pipe water being returned to the boilers for reuse.

The seven PDS Group Sourcing businesses: Poeticgem, Techno-Design, Design Arc, Simple Approach, Zamira Fashions, Norlanka and Spring Near East, which collectively represent almost 60 per cent of the PDS Groups annual revenue.

The group’s three manufacturing businesses—Green Smart Shirts Ltd, Progress Apparels (Bangladesh) Ltd. and Norlanka Manufacturing Ltd.—together represent around 10 per cent of the groups revenue.

Sri Lanka’s Norlanka Manufacturing Ltd aims to be a net-zero land-filling organisation by 2024 and to be carbon neutral by 2025. Together with reducing its carbon footprint through the use of solar energy, Norlanka has also ventured into rainwater harvesting and water conservation projects which together will deliver a net positive impact on the environment. The company’s rainwater harvesting system at its manufacturing plant was completed in March this year.

It has installed its own solar energy plant at the factory in Trincomalee. This installation will generate an average of 70,500 kWh and with the factory consuming an average of 60,000 kWh, the additional generated power can be fed into the Sri Lanka national grid, thereby offsetting some of the energy use of Norlanka’s wider business.

Between April 2020 and March 2021, Norlanka Manufacturing’s water consumption was 7.2 million litres. The water supply for more than half of this consumption (around 4 million litres) comes from a deep well resource. This is used for sanitary facilities (toilet flushing). The rest (around 3.2 million litres) for drinking purposes, is taken from the direct, municipal supply line.

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Prior to 2020, Green Smart Shirts Limited’s (GSSL) total annual water consumption was 50 million litres. Following the implementation of water saving measures this was reduced by some 40 per cent to 30.1 million litres between April 2020 to March 2021. Between April 2021 to March 2022, GSSL set itself a target of reducing its water consumption by a further 3 per cent or 0.9 million litres.

Last year, Progress Apparels (Bangladesh) Limited’s (PABL) water consumption was 70.8 million litres. Following the implementation of water-saving measures, this has been reduced by 53 per cent to 33.3 million litres between April 2020 to March 2021. This consumption included 332,000 litres of harvested, reused water.

Promoting sustainability around the world, PDS Limited—earlier called PDS Multinational Fashions Limited—is a global consumer-driven manufacturing and sourcing platform serving the world’s leading brands and retailers. It has presence in more than 22 countries. Its corporate office is in Mumbai.