Till December 2020, Vietnam’s manufacturers exported around 1.2 billion masks to North America, Europe and around Asia, according to statistics from the General Department of Vietnam Customs. The pandemic triggered a surge in demand for personal protective equipment (PPE) from the manufacturing sector in Vietnam. The country had 6,000 garment factories and textile mills employing some three million workers in 2020.

One of the prominent manufacturers is Vietnam Goods and Exports (VGE) which excels in garment manufacturing and low-tech products like personal protective equipment, such as face masks, gowns, hand sanitizers, wipes, etc. Vietnam’s Ministry of Industry and Trade is bullish on the possibilities of the garment and textile industry producing PPE, particularly in the anti-bacterial cloth mask segment. Trans Thanh Hai, Deputy Director-Export and Import Department of the Ministry said, Vietnam is capable of becoming one of the world’s major cloth face mask producers. Coupled with the fact that anti-bacterial fabric was now being produced locally, he believed production capacity could be increased significantly.