State of the Environment in
Vennesla 2002

 
norwegian

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LIFE CYCLE ANALYSE OF A UMBRO PRODUCT

Scan Trade is located in Vennesla and was established in 1987.

Today Scan Trade has 44 co-workers, and has at its disposal 4300 square metres in the centre of the district, 15 kilometres north of Kristiansand. In 2000 they turned over 160 mill. NOK. wholesale. They market and sell the brand names of Umbro, Proline, Seger and Mizuno.

Umbro’s main office is in England. Norway collaborates with Sweden and Finland on which products to market. There is one designer in Norway and a joint designer in Finland. A sketch is drawn of the design. Finland, Sweden and Norway gather in a product assembly to decide which products are going to come into the market. It takes one year and a half from the design is drawn before you find it at various sports dealers around the country. At the product assembly one views the drawings and decides which designs and colours to have a go at. Then one dispatches the sketches to the factories in China or Taiwan to have a prototype made. This trade sample is returned and sundry adjustments are made. One has to test the trade sample to see whether the colour rubs off, whether it shrinks or snatches. When all is done the sample is returned to the factory and production starts. Whether this fouls or pollutes the environment the Scan-Trade-spokesman couldn’t say, nor the amount of energy that was consumed in the production. It was confirmed however that every factory is ISO-endorsed. This means the factory cleanliness is kept in check and the work is performed orderly. At the factories big machines do the knitting, the colouring and the drying of the fabric. There may be as many as 250 seamstresses lined up in rows sewing. Many of these are girls in their late teens that have to work to provide food for their families. This is their only means of livelihood beyond sweeping streets. The factories arrange for freight by boat to Norway, taking 5 weeks. Scan Trade being just importer has no polluting guilty conscience at all to live with; the only foreseeable polluting agent is the freight from the factories to Vennesla by boat and truck.

The articles that were not picked out by the assembly used to be sent by truck to Chile and other indigent places in the world where they were given away. We have got no comments as to what happens today.

After the product has arrived in Norway each shop/chain decides which articles to order and the suitable number. And finally after one year and a half we may as customers buy the product in the shops.