Pacific Brands is one of the largest importers of shipping containers in Australia. In the 2008 Financial Year, we shipped 14,000 containers ⁱ, delivered to more than 23,000 customer addresses and supplied in excess of 300 million units internationally. The scale of our business has demanded we operate a world-class supply chain, spanning the Asia Pacific region and delivering to customers throughout the world. In fact, Logistics Magazine - the official publication of the Supply Chain Logistics Association of Australia - ranked Pacific Brands as Australia's Top Apparel Supply Chain.

The sophistication of our supply operations allows us to offer flexibility to our customers and increase speed to market for the benefit of our consumers.

We are committed to maintaining world-best practice with our supply chain and we are continually looking for ways to optimise its speed and efficiency.

One recent improvement in our continuing evolution has been the consolidation of four of our businesses into one distribution centre at the new $1 billion TradeCoast Industrial Park at Eagle Farm north-east of Brisbane. Pacific Brands was the foundation tenant of the site, acquiring a 24,000m² warehouse, 2,000m² office and showrooms. The new location is a significant improvement, delivering better safety outcomes, modern handling equipment and more advanced technology.

We have also implemented a strategic procurement plan that has led to us developing a number of key partnerships with suppliers of indirect goods and services such as travel, communications, logistics and insurance. By sharing this supplier base across the business, productivity is increased and costs are minimised.

The majority of our products are sourced from China. Our relationships with our suppliers in China are long-standing, built on our 50-year history in the region and based on shared values of flexibility, quality, speed and ethical responsibility. As costs in China increase, we will continue to work closely with our key suppliers and strategic partners to maintain the quality of our products while at the same time, achieving the lowest costs and reduced lead times.

While the majority of our products are sourced from China, we also source from other emerging producer nations. We will continue to source products from other countries such as Vietnam, Indonesia and Bangladesh. We are also investigating emerging producer regions in China.

Pacific Brands Asia (PBA), our permanent presence in Asia, is based in Hong Kong. Its objective is to ensure that we build or maintain meaningful and trusted relationships with leading suppliers, ensuring that our standards of quality and social compliance are upheld. We drive our sourcing scale through PBA where it is appropriate to do so.