POVERTY IS PANTS, BUT NEW BUSINESS STEPS IN TO HELP

You may have heard of period poverty, where in some parts of the world women don’t have access to the sanitary products they need every month, forcing them to stay at home.

The charity Action Aid estimates that one in 10 girls in Africa will miss school when they have their periods, seriously disadvantaging them in life. But when Sarah Jordan travelled to East Africa in 2016 to undertake charity work as part of the Uganda Marathon, she realised that it wasn’t just sanitary products the girls needed, it was pants too.

“I was shocked at the number of women and children I met who didn't have access to something we take for granted every day – underwear.”

When she returned home to Oxford (after breaking her leg in the marathon itself, but that’s another story), she decided to launch a business selling underwear on a buy-one-give-two model. You Underwear was born.

However, Sarah didn’t want to sell just any knickers, how they were manufactured was important too.

“Conventional cotton is a really polluting crop, and the more I dug into it, the more I realised if we were going to provide underwear, we had to do it in a sustainable way.” That meant outsourcing to India.

“We manufacture in India because most organic cotton is grown there, and rather than import the cotton on rolls and make the pants here, we import the final finished products, so our footprint is less. Through the company we work with there, which uses local co-operatives, we have visibility throughout our supply chain,” Sarah explained.

She launched the business thanks to a £20,000 crowd-funding campaign, and despite a few Covid-19 setbacks (when she had to scale back selling at markets, pop-ups and events), things are going well with online sales growing.

“We launched two new ranges just before Christmas which include bralettes designed by two schoolgirls in Oxford, and partnered with a designer in Nairobi. We are also looking at branching out into new items such as T-shirts and loungewear.

“The biggest thing behind what we are doing is trying to show that fashion can be a force for good and doesn’t need to kill the planet.

“I am happy for the business to grow more slowly, I want it to be profitable, but not at the expense of the environment.” www.youunderwear.com

GREAT WESTERN FREEPORT COULD CREATE UP TO 50,000 JOBS IN REGION

The West of England Combined Authority is bidding to host a Great Western Freeport that could create up to 50,000 jobs in the region, 90,000 nationally and boost the economy by around £3 billion a year.

Freeports are secure customs zones where business can be carried out inside a country’s land border, but where different customs rules apply.

The Authority is working with public and private sector partners, including further and higher education, and has ambitions for the port to become a national hub for green manufacturing and trade.

A Great Western Freeport would be based around Bristol Port, the UK’s most centrally located deep water port, with additional tax and customs sites at Avonmouth and Severnside, Junction 21 Enterprise Area and Gravity Smart Campus.