Drug smuggling complicates Caribbean textile business

By Eric Heisler
Greensboro News & Record
Friday, April 06, 2001


Gildan Activewear has closed a small sewing plant in Barbados because the textile company can't keep drug smugglers from packing marijuana into the plant's clothing shipments, the company announced Thursday.

Gildan, a Canadian company with operations in Eden, said customs officials found marijuana on a shipment to the United States in February.  The company decided to close the plant because its security wouldn't be able to stop the smuggling.

The company made its comments in a news release.  Gildan officials did not return several calls for further comment.

While the company expects the move to have little effect on its bottom line, the news exposes what could be a bigger problem for the struggling textile industry.

Under pressure to compete with Asia, many North Carolina textile companies are looking to the Caribbean Basin countries for help.  A new trade law makes it more profitable to ship textiles to those countries, where workers will sew the fabric into garments and send them back to the United States.

But drug smuggling on those shipments back to America could complicate the process.  On the line for textile companies is a projected $8 billion increase in U.S.  fabric sales to the region over the next three years.

"We're not going to be able to get anything from there if authorities there aren't better able to police this," said Charlie Bremer, director of International Trade for the American Textile Manufacturers Institute.  "They need to do something about it."

Bremer said the Gildan incident is not an isolated one.  Several Triad textile and apparel companies said Thursday they take extremes to prevent the smuggling.

The marijuana on the February Gildan shipment was found during a stop in Jamaica, according to Gildan.  The drug was found in a container of Gildan's products.

Incidents like this one aren't unusual, according to U.S.  customs officials.  As imports soared throughout the 1990s, drug smugglers looked to otherwise legal shipments to get their contraband into America.

"They put it in places where customs just can't find it," said Dean Boyd, an anti-drug specialist with the U.S.  customs agency.  Hundreds of tons of narcotics are seized this way each year.

But that can become a problem for a textile or apparel company victimized by the smuggling, industry officials say.  Customs officials often seize the entire shipment if they find narcotics.

"That's a product you've sold, but can't deliver to your customers," said Peggy Carter, a spokeswoman for Sara Lee.  ''People don't have the time for that or the resources to replace it."

Since marijuana was detected on a shipment from a Sara Lee contractor about 10 years ago, the company devised a better security plan and hasn't had an incident since.

"It told us we have to develop a better mousetrap," said Jerry Cook, the company's vice president of international trade.

But if drug-smuggling is a problem for textile companies at all, as some in the industry say, it will only get worse in the next few years.  Trade with the Caribbean is expected to be on the rise because of the new legislation.

That should benefit domestic textile companies, but Gildan's problems have caused some concern.

"We need the imports to get here for it to increase," said Bremer.