Bangladesh's garment factories are losing 4.1% of their revenue to heat, according to a Fibre2Fashion report on the sector's exposure to rising temperatures.

The figure translates the climate risk facing the country's ready-made garment (RMG) industry — the world's second-largest apparel exporter after China — into a direct production-line cost. It lands on an industry that already competes on thin margins against Vietnam, India and newer low-cost sourcing destinations.

Why does heat cut revenue rather than just costs?

High temperatures reduce worker productivity on factory floors, slow output and can force production stoppages during peak heat periods. The revenue loss reported reflects the gap between what factories could ship and what they actually deliver under heat stress. For an industry built on volume-based, price-competitive order books from Western buyers, any percentage-point erosion of output hits margins that often run in single digits.

What tier of the supply chain does this hit?

The exposure sits at the cut-make-trim tier — the Bangladeshi factories that assemble garments for global brands. These suppliers absorb the operational consequences of heat: reduced sewing-floor productivity, higher energy demand for cooling and ventilation, and pressure on delivery schedules that buyers enforce through penalties or order shifts.

Unlike tariff changes or cotton price swings, this cost driver is structural. Temperatures in South Asia are trending upward, and buyers allocating sourcing volumes across countries now face a supplier base whose effective capacity varies with the climate.

What does this force sourcing teams to decide?

The 4.1% revenue loss gives buying houses two concrete questions to price in:

• Whether Bangladesh quotes remain competitive once heat-driven output losses and cooling-related energy costs are factored into landed cost comparisons with Vietnam, India and Indonesia.
• Whether supplier codes and facility standards need to incorporate heat-mitigation requirements — ventilation, cooling infrastructure, shifted shift patterns — as compliance items rather than optional worker-welfare programmes.

For factory owners in Dhaka and Chattogram, the calculation is equally direct: capital investment in climate control now competes with the 4.1% revenue drag it is meant to recover. For brands, the number signals that country-risk assessments for Bangladesh should treat heat as a quantified production variable, not a background environmental concern.