5th NORDIC-BALTIC CONFERENCE IN REGIONAL SCIENCE
GLOBAL-LOCAL INTERPLAY IN THE BALTIC SEA REGION
Pärnu, Estonia, October 1-4, 1998

Prof. Sven Illeris
Roskilde University, House 21.2
Dept. of Geography, Socio-Economic Analysis
BOX 260, 4000 Roskilde, Denmark
Tel.: 45 4674 2514    Fax: 45 5674 3031
E-mail: illeris@geo.ruc.dk

The paper deals with the causes and consequenses of outsourcing of sewing and other work from the Herning-Ikast textile and clothing industrial district to factories in northern Poland and Lithuania. This process, which is caused by the lower wages and rather high quality of the East Baltic sewing industry, has been very fast since 1993. Most work has been contracted out to local Polish and Lithuanian firms, but in some cases Danish firms have invested in joint ventures or established subsidiaries. In the East Baltic countries, considerable employment has been created. In Denmark, the consequenses have been dramatic: almost all sewing work has disappeared, and the former manufacturing firms have been tarnsformed into managing trading firms which design clothes, buy raw materials and cut the cloth, ship it to the East Baltic firms for sewing and back, and market the finished products. Danish firms have increased their profitability and their staff designers, administrators and marketing people, but radically reduced their employment of unskilled personnel. Fortunately, this has happened in a period of general boom where most seamstress have been able to find work in other industries (wood and furnitare) or in the public sector of welfare services. The possible future developments in the textile and clothing sectors of Denmark and East Baltic countries are discussed.