Portugal Is H&M Group’s Sixth-Largest Factory Country — and More Than Half Its 63 Factories Are Listed Under Three Years

H&M Group’s latest public supplier list names 63 factories in Portugal, more than in any other European Union country. The August 2026 edition, which the group’s web server records as last modified on 23 September, contains 1,552 factories in 32 countries, and Portugal ranks sixth, behind Mainland China (466), Türkiye (278), India (220), Bangladesh (188) and Vietnam (90) and ahead of Italy (49). On NorthSouth HQ’s count, 33 of the 63 Portuguese factories, 52 percent, are listed as working with H&M for less than three years, against 37 percent across the whole list. Almost half of those 33 come through a single supplier.

The Swedish group, the largest fashion company in its home country, says in the file that it does not own any factories and works instead with independent manufacturers. It first published a supplier list in 2013, is a signatory of the Transparency Pledge and updates the list quarterly. Each row names a factory, its address and the supplier H&M deals with, says whether the factory is owned by that supplier or works for it under contract, and gives a band for how long the factory has worked with H&M, along with product types, certifications and a workforce band. Since February 2026, H&M says, each factory appears only once. The list counts factories, not orders: a small sewing unit weighs the same as a complex with more than 4,000 workers, tenure is given in bands for each factory rather than for each supplier, and a factory listed under three years may be returning after a gap rather than new. Within those limits, it shows where the group’s production sits and which parts of it are recent.

Sixth of 32 countries

Europe outside Türkiye accounts for 141 factories on the list, and Portugal has 63 of them, about 45 percent; Italy has 49, Spain 7, Romania 6 and Bulgaria 4. Of the 139 factories in EU member states, Portugal again holds 45 percent (NorthSouth HQ calculation from the list; the shares in the table above are calculated the same way). H&M’s Nordic home barely features: Sweden has two factories on the list, a footwear and bag maker in Gnosjö and a beauty-products plant in Linköping, and Denmark one, a beauty manufacturer. Portugal is also fifth for jersey, the knitted fabric of T-shirts and similar garments, with 31 factories after Türkiye (82), Mainland China (57), Bangladesh (50) and India (43), and fourth for footwear, with six factories after Mainland China (35), India (15) and Bangladesh (8). Italy has three footwear factories on the list.

Small factories, networked suppliers

Behind the 63 Portuguese factories are 29 suppliers. Tritêxtil – Indústria de Vestuário is named on 16 rows, its own factory and fifteen others, Valérius Têxteis on 8, Becri Malhas e Confecções on 6 and Oscar Confecções on 4. All 63 are in the smallest workforce band, 1 to 500 workers, a band that covers 63 percent of factories on the whole list. Thirty-four work for the named supplier under contract and 29 are owned by it. Jersey is the main product, on 31 rows. Eighteen rows carry no product type; they are component and processing units, among them dyeing, finishing, printing, embroidery and tanning plants such as Tintex in Vila Nova de Cerveira, Somelos and Tintojal in Ronfe, Guimarães, Dermaleather and Demoscore in Alcanena, the centre of Portugal’s tanning industry, and the tannery Curtumes Ibéria. The six footwear factories, all also listed for bags and belts, are Asial in Vizela; Conceição Rosa Pereira & Cª, which supplies through Luis Onofre Internacional, and Vitorino da Silva Coelho, both in Oliveira de Azeméis; Moisés Pinto de Carvalho & Filhos and Sofisar in Felgueiras; and Rodiro in Revinhade, also in Felgueiras. Home goods make up most of the rest: the potteries Val do Sol Cerâmicas and Vasicol in Pedreiras and Matcerâmica in Batalha, the cutlery maker Herdmar in Guimarães and two Têxteis J. F. Almeida home-textile units. The sock maker Jorge Gomes & Irmão in Barcelos and a woven-garment unit of Oscar Confecções complete the list.

Where the addresses name a town, the factories cluster in the Minho and the Ave and Cávado valleys. Barcelos appears in nine addresses, Guimarães in seven, Fafe in at least four, and Póvoa de Varzim and Felgueiras in three each, with others in Braga, Vizela, Ponte de Lima, Vila Nova de Famalicão and Vila Nova de Cerveira. Several addresses give only a street.

Nearshoring in the tenure column

The tenure column is where the change shows. Of the 33 Portuguese factories listed under three years, 16 are in the Tritêxtil network, every one of its rows, and 22 are contract units rather than supplier-owned plants; 19 make jersey. Oscar Confecções adds four, and Ramiro & Carvalho and ETFOR two each. The rest of the Portuguese base is long-standing. Thirteen factories are listed at more than ten years, among them Valérius Têxteis and Becri in Barcelos, Jorge Gomes & Irmão, Tintex and the shoemakers Asial, Vitorino da Silva Coelho and Moisés Pinto de Carvalho; nine are listed at six to ten years and eight at three to six.

H&M’s other suppliers close to Europe show the same pattern, more strongly. In Türkiye, 53 percent of factories are listed under three years; in Morocco it is 24 of 26 and in Egypt 20 of 21. In the large Asian bases the share is lower, at 41 percent in India, 24 percent in Mainland China and 10 percent in Bangladesh, although Vietnam, at 67 percent, is an exception. Italy is at 39 percent. That is consistent with nearshoring, the shift of some production closer to European stores for shorter lead times and smaller runs, but the list does not say why factories were added, and it gives no volumes.

What Swedish customs data show

Trade statistics offer only a partial check. Statistics Sweden data show that Swedish imports of knitted apparel from Portugal (CN chapter 61) rose 15.2 percent to SEK 178.0 million in January to July 2026 from a year earlier, while woven apparel (chapter 62) fell 25.3 percent to SEK 141.7 million, leaving the two clothing chapters together 7.1 percent lower. Home textiles (chapter 63) rose 9.0 percent to SEK 70.8 million and ceramics (chapter 69) 3.8 percent to SEK 110.0 million, while footwear (chapter 64) fell 7.2 percent to SEK 72.6 million (NorthSouth HQ calculations from the unadjusted monthly series, by country of consignment). These figures cover every Swedish importer, not H&M alone, and goods bound for H&M’s stores in other markets need not pass through Sweden at all, so they cannot be read as the group’s purchases.

Why this matters for the corridor

For Portuguese manufacturers, the list is a public record of who already supplies Sweden’s largest fashion group, and of how: small factories organised around a lead supplier, with dyeing, printing and embroidery done by specialist neighbours, a structure that can add factories quickly, as the Tritêxtil rows show. Several of the companies are listed in the NorthSouth HQ directory of Portuguese companies in the Nordics, among them Rodiro, Jorge Gomes & Irmão, Valérius Têxteis and Vitorino da Silva Coelho. What to watch: H&M’s next quarterly update, which will show whether the Portuguese count holds at 63, and whether the Tritêxtil network moves up the tenure bands or drops off the list.