The Romanian Textile Industry in 2024: Scale, Shifts, and Sustainability Pressures

Slow fashion has emerged alongside Romania's traditional contract garment manufacturing base. Photo: Wikimedia Commons / CC BY 2.0

Scale of the sector in 2023–2024

According to data from the Romanian National Institute of Statistics (INS) and Eurostat, Romania's combined textile and apparel manufacturing sector (NACE divisions 13 and 14) accounted for approximately 4.4% of total Romanian manufacturing employment in 2022, the most recent year for which full annual data is available.

Export value from apparel (NACE 14) was approximately €3.8 billion in 2022, making Romania the sixth-largest EU apparel exporter by value. Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, France, and Belgium receive the majority of Romanian garment exports — most of which are produced under lohn (CMT — cut, make, trim) contracts, where the customer supplies fabric and Romania provides labour and finishing.

Wages in the sector have risen substantially since 2015, narrowing — though not eliminating — the labour cost differential with Western European manufacturers. Average gross monthly wages in Romanian apparel manufacturing reached approximately 3,400 RON in 2023 (roughly €680), compared to the national average of approximately 5,600 RON.

The lohn model and its limits

Lohn manufacturing — where a Romanian factory receives pre-cut fabric from a Western European customer, sews and finishes the garment, and ships it back — has been the dominant business model in Romanian apparel since the early 1990s. It requires low capital investment from the Romanian side, minimal design capacity, and primarily competes on price per standard minute of sewing labour.

The model's limitations are structural: Romanian manufacturers build little brand equity, have no direct relationship with end consumers, and are exposed to customer decisions to relocate production to lower-cost countries. Between 2005 and 2015, Romania lost a significant share of lohn contracts to Bulgaria, Serbia, and North Macedonia as Romanian wages increased.

Some manufacturers have responded by moving partially toward OEM (Own Equipment Manufacturing) or OBM (Own Brand Manufacturing) models, where they hold intellectual property over designs and sell finished products under their own brand. This transition is slow and requires capital investment in design, marketing, and distribution that lohn contractors have not historically needed.

EU sustainability regulation: what is coming

Several EU regulatory initiatives will directly affect Romanian textile manufacturers over the next five years.

Ecodesign for Sustainable Products Regulation (ESPR)

The ESPR, adopted in 2024, establishes a framework for setting minimum sustainability requirements for product categories including textiles. For garments, expected requirements include minimum recycled content thresholds, durability standards, restrictions on certain hazardous substances, and — critically — Digital Product Passports (DPPs) that must accompany products placed on the EU market.

DPPs will require manufacturers to document fibre composition, country of manufacture, applicable certifications, and recyclability information in a machine-readable format. For Romanian CMT contractors, this means they will need to collect and transmit supply chain data that their customers currently handle — or renegotiate contracts to define who is responsible.

Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) for textiles

EU member states are required to establish EPR schemes for textiles by 2025 under the revised Waste Framework Directive. Romania's implementation timeline is under discussion. EPR schemes typically require producers and importers of textiles to contribute to the costs of separate textile waste collection and sorting infrastructure.

Romania currently has limited capacity for post-consumer textile sorting. The national household textile waste collection rate is significantly below the EU average, reflecting a combination of missing collection points, low consumer awareness, and the absence of economic incentives for sorting operators handling low-grade textile waste.

Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive (CSDDD)

The CSDDD requires large EU companies and large non-EU companies with significant EU revenue to conduct due diligence on human rights and environmental impacts across their supply chains. While Romanian SMEs are not directly in scope of the directive, they may become subject to due diligence requests from their large EU customers who are in scope.

Domestic consumption patterns

Romanian per capita expenditure on clothing was approximately €330 in 2022 according to Eurostat household budget data — below the EU average of approximately €560 but growing. International fast fashion chains are dominant in urban retail; domestic brands hold a small but slowly growing share of the market.

Second-hand clothing markets have grown rapidly in Bucharest, Cluj-Napoca, and other cities since 2019. Dedicated second-hand retail outlets and vintage markets report consistently high foot traffic, particularly among consumers aged 18–35. While second-hand purchasing reduces new clothing production, it also indicates shifting consumption norms that sustainable fashion brands can position around.

Infrastructure challenges for the sustainable segment

Romanian brands seeking to operate sustainably face several infrastructure gaps:

• Certified processing capacity: As noted in the materials article, the number of GOTS-certified facilities in Romania is small relative to demand from brands seeking certified supply chains.
• Textile waste sorting: Closed-loop production — where garment offcuts or post-consumer garments re-enter the raw material stream — requires sorting and mechanical or chemical recycling capacity that does not currently exist at scale in Romania.
• Logistics: Romanian logistics infrastructure has improved significantly with EU Cohesion Fund investment, but cold-chain and specialist transport for sensitive textile materials (e.g., natural-dyed goods requiring humidity control) is limited outside major urban centres.
• Skilled labour: Flatlock and specialty sewing skills are in short supply as experienced workers retire and vocational education for garment construction has shrunk. Several brands have established internal training programmes.