According to their chief sustainability officer, Noel Kinder, Nike is committed to investing and expanding production in Vietnam. He expressed this in a recent meeting with Vietnam’s Prime Minister Pham Minh Chinh, at the 26th UN Climate Change Conference in Glasgow. Kinder told Chinh more than 100 Nike factories in the country have resumed production following a COVID-induced hiatus. He also said the current situation in Vietnam has improved a lot and the firm is planning to expand operations there.
Recently Vietnamese officials have been quick to hit back at rumours that Nike had planned to move production out of the country.
“The complicated developments of COVID-19 in Vietnam have affected production of enterprises in the garment-textile and footwear sector, and Nike has moved a number of orders to other countries. But there was no such thing that Nike was moving production out of Vietnam,” Phan Thi Thanh Xuan, vice chairwoman and general secretary of the Vietnam Leather and Footwear Association (LEFASO), said.
According to Xuan, 88 out of Nike's 112 factories in Vietnam are located in the Southeast region, which produce many best-selling Nike-branded sneaker products.
