Nike is committed to investing and expanding production in Vietnam, its chief sustainability officer Noel Kinder told Prime Minister Pham Minh Chinh at a recent meeting on the sidelines of 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.
Kinder told the prime minister the current situation in Vietnam has improved a lot and the firm is planning to expand operations there, according to a news agency report.
Vietnamese officials hit back at rumours recently that Nike had planned to move production out of Vietnam.
“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.
