BLÅKLÄDER WORKWEAR OPENS NEW HYPER-MODERN SHOE FACTORY IN SRI LANKA

In 2020, Swedish Blåkläder Workwear unveiled an entirely new line of orthopedic safety footwear which immediately became a huge success. However, Blåkläder has been wanting to gather all knowledge and knowhow about safety footwear inhouse and thereby achieve full control over the production down to the smallest details. Therefore, Blåkläder has chosen to insource the entire production in a completely new Sri Lankan Blåkläder-factory dedicated to safety footwear.

City, date – Since 1959, Blåkläder Workwear has been known for its durable and responsibly manufactured workwear which is crafted in Blåkläder’s own factories in Sri Lanka and Myanmar. In order to build upon the company’s long-standing production principles and create a common thread between the company’s workwear and the new line of safety footwear, Blåkläder has just cut the ribbon to an entirely new shoe factory in the village of Ulapane just outside of Kandy in Sri Lanka.

The opening of Blåkläder’s own shoe factory has the advantage that the company can take full control of all materials and sub-contractors that are part of the production. A craftsperson typically takes around 80 million steps during an entire work-life, and therefore, it’s imperative to Blåkläder that the company’s safety footwear is constructed according to the highest possible orthopedic principles. This demands a very close collaboration with a few select subcontractors together with a top modern factory equipped with the best machines available on the market – altogether contributing to high quality safety footwear.

The safety footwear from Blåkläder has been developed by orthopedic specialist Camp Pro in Sweden in collaboration with Blåkläder’s own hand-picked specialists. Together, the team draws upon a combined experience of 600 years with feet biomechanics, orthopedics, and foot rehabilitation. Stability, protection, and injury prevention have thus been key components during the development phase in order to protect the user against injuries and damage. In addition to the collaboration with Camp Pro, Blåkläder has also partnered up with Portuguese Fagus who have developed the shoe tree and the shoe bed from scratch to provide maximum stability and cushioning. The shoe tree furthermore ensures a highly dynamic step sequence for the user.

The new factory in Sri Lanka will start out with 500 employees from day one and a yearly production capacity of 700,000 pairs of safety shoes. Similar to Blåkläder’s other factories, the new factory will be equipped with LED lighting and skylights in the roof which give the employees access to sunlight inside of the factory. In addition, solar panels on the roof cover a large proportion of the factory’s energy consumption. The production water is also reused for e.g. toilet flushing and irrigation.

– Our goal with the new factory is that our employees have a nice place to work and that we can manufacture with the same degree of responsibility as in our other factories. This implies that we keep a close eye on the factory’s climate footprint and a value chain where we only work together with a few select sub-contractors so that we gain full control of quality and traceability. In addition, we’ve put a lot of work into the ergonomics of our safety footwear, and the good thing is that there are great market shares to be won on that parameter in particular, says Mathew Vandorpe, country manager for Blåkläder Benelux & UK.

Read more about Blåkläder’s safety footwear here: https://www.blaklader.nl/en/experience-true-comfort

For more information, contact:

Blåkläder Salesteam NL
E-mail: info@blaklader.nl, phone: 0031 (0) 522 246 742