AT a factory about 45 minutes of drive away from the Bangladeshi capital Dhaka, tens of thousands of workers are busy on the production line, churning out more than 200,000 hats each day for export to destinations around the globe.

Founded by Hong Kong entrepreneur Pauline Ngan Po-ling, this plant is named Unimas Sportswear Ltd., a Bangladesh-based plant of Mainland Headwear Holdings Ltd., one of the world’s largest headwear producers.

The company started up in 1992 in Shenzhen. In 2000, it was listed in Hong Kong, where Ngan was born. She established the Bangladeshi factory in 2013 in light of the China-proposed Belt and Road Initiative (BRI).

Keen to grasp the opportunities to expand overseas presented by the BRI for labor-intensive manufacturers, she decided to relocate the factory’s main production line to Bangladesh, which is a major global textile processing and exporting country with abundant young and skilled labor.

Back then, the poverty-stricken village formerly known as Bagbari had almost impassable roads for vehicles during the long monsoon season when people had to turn to ox carts. Vast stretches of land were left barren, where wolves roamed at night with howls echoing through the air.

“Power outages occurred 20 to 30 times a day, and 90% of our employees were even unable to write their own names,” Ngan said. “It’s a long journey for us to have come this far.”

Ngan and her team started developing the area by drilling wells, building roads and establishing a stable power supply. For two years straight, they worked tirelessly to build a modern production base in the barren wilderness.

What started as a small factory with a hundred employees has now grown into a modern facility with thousands of workers. Even during the COVID-19 pandemic, the company’s net profit maintained an annual growth rate of 50%. Next month, Mainland Headwear’s fourth-phase factory in Bangladesh will be fully operational, with a total floor area of over 90,000 square meters.

“The rapid development of the firm is due to the benefits of the BRI,” Ngan said. (Xinhua)