Montrims integrates EAS, RFID and NFC into one smart label

Dr. Aminul Haque’s career has unfolded across two distinct chapters, spanning some of the world’s leading corporations and industries. His professional journey began in Bangladesh with Novartis, the global pharmaceutical company, followed by senior roles at Lafarge, Rahimafrooz and Robi Axiata, giving him broad exposure to pharmaceuticals, building materials, diversified business and telecommunications before technology became a defining part of his career.

The second chapter took him to Oracle in Singapore, where he served as Director for Southeast Asia’s growing countries and the Indochina region. During his tenure, he received around a dozen sales and leadership awards, reflecting his contribution to business growth and regional leadership.

Figure 1: Dr. Aminul Haque, Chief Executive Officer of Montrims Limited. Alongside his corporate career, Dr. Haque has built a strong academic and executive education portfolio. He holds a Doctor of Business Administration in Global Supply Chain Management and an MBA from Victoria University, Australia. He has also completed executive programs at institutions including the National University of Singapore, Yale, Cambridge, MIT, Oxford and Harvard.

Today, Dr. Haque serves as Chief Executive Officer of Montrims Limited, founded in 2003 and one of Bangladesh’s largest trims and packaging companies. He leads a workforce of more than 3,500 people involved in producing labels, hangtags, printed packaging, polybags, cartons, sewing thread and RFID and NFC enabled smart labels at its operations in Gazipur.

His recently published book, Unveiling Reality, reflects a philosophy that also shapes his leadership approach: transparency should be treated as an organizational capability to be developed rather than simply a reporting requirement.

Textile Today recently had a discussion with Dr. Aminul Haque on his career journey, leadership experience, his new book Unveiling Reality, the evolving role of Digital Product Passports, supply chain transparency and the future of technology driven transformation in the textile and apparel industry.

Textile Today: Your book Unveiling Reality focuses on Digital Transparency. How is Montrims practically using digital technology to improve transparency across its production and supply chain?

Dr. Aminul Haque: The book turns on a distinction I use in my day-to-day operations: visibility is seeing an event; transparency is trusting the explanation behind it. Any buyer can see a shipment date. Few can tell you what resin went into the polybag, which converter made it, which lab tested it.

So, we built the explanation into daily operations — a digital thread tying every order to its packaging SKU, bill of materials, supplier declaration, production lot and shipment, each record carrying a QR code or an NFC tag. Certificates and test reports live against the order, expiry alerts and all, not in email folders.

Around 95 percent of our shipped lots carry that full chain, with the evidence pack produced inside the transaction and process workflow itself. My research is blunt about why it works: implementation quality beats technology choice thirty-three times over.

Textile Today: What would be the key phases for implementing Digital Product Passports (DPPs) in Bangladesh's Textile and Apparel Industry?

Dr. Aminul Haque: In the book I lay out five phases; the sequence matters more than the software. Map your supply chain and clean your product data — most discover their real gap here. Assess suppliers honestly: who can deliver fibre-level composition and test data in digital form.

Wire the data infrastructure into your ERP, supply chain management (SCM) and supplier collaboration systems. Pilot with two or three cooperative buyers on one line for six to twelve months, go/no-go criteria fixed in advance. Only then scale — governance and supplier development behind it.

My research suggests where money goes: roughly 70 percent into implementation — data quality, training, supplier support — 30 percent into technology, over one to two years. The textile delegated act is expected in late 2027; factories waiting for the final template are already late.

Textile Today: If factories fail to properly implement Digital Product Passport (DPP) requirements, what kind of consequences could they face in the international market?

Dr. Aminul Haque: The cleanest consequence is market access, and the timeline is public: check the EU portal. The Packaging and Packaging Waste Regulation (PPWR) applies to every packaging SKU from 12 August 2026. The Ecodesign for Sustainable Products Regulation (ESPR) — the Digital Product Passport (DPP) framework — entered into force on 18 July 2024; its registry went live in July 2026.

Textiles lead the 2025-2030 working plan; the textile delegated act is expected in late 2027, with at least eighteen months of transition. The laws are cousins: PPWR recitals call it a complement to ESPR, and passports may add packaging requirements — trims, packaging and garment, one evidence chain.

Miss the DPP: no passport, no sale — then buyer delisting, heavier Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) fees and greenwashing enforcement. I have watched a mismatched certificate cost a shipment.

Textile Today: Can you share one winning product of Montrims that is unique and stands out in the market?

Dr. Aminul Haque: One tag, many jobs. Our smart label carries Electronic Article Surveillance (EAS), Ultra-High Frequency (UHF) RFID and Near-Field Communication (NFC) in a single tag: the anti-theft gate at the store door, the stock count in the warehouse, the consumer's phone, and increasingly the Digital Product Passport carrier.

Figure 2: Rahbar Hsossain with Montrims team members. The scale is real — up to two million inlays attached and four million tags encoded a day, on a line running 176,400 pieces an hour. Around it sits the quieter half: a portal where the customer pulls the data itself, access restricted to authorised people, complete documentation built to the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). Most suppliers offer one piece of this; chips, high-speed production and the compliance platform sit under one roof in Gazipur — a small label as the data backbone of a garment.

Textile Today: The energy crisis remains a major challenge for the Manufacturing Sector. Montrims has invested in rooftop solar. How effective has this investment been, and what role can renewable energy play in the future?

Dr. Aminul Haque: Solar covers about half of our total power now. With national gas demand near 3,825 million cubic feet a day against far lower supply, panels on a factory roof are production insurance before they are a climate statement: when the grid stumbles, our lines keep moving and the energy bill stays predictable.

The same numbers do quiet duty for customers — the renewable share flows into the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) 302 and Scope 2 data they must disclose under the Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD). We are piloting wind, LEED is targeted for late 2026.

Textile Today: Global buyers are putting greater emphasis on Sustainability, Compliance and Traceability. How is Montrims helping RMG factories meet these evolving requirements?

Dr. Aminul Haque: Think of the last mile: a garment can be flawless and still not ship, because the label or the packaging failed. That final mile is our work, and we make it simple. Packaging redesigned for recyclability — mono-material polybags and cartons with Polychart Europe-certified recycled content in four tiers, above 30 percent up to 100.

A laboratory accredited by H&M and PUMA, testing to ISO, ASTM and AATCC methods under one roof. A compliance portal that attaches declarations, certificates and test reports to every shipment before the buyer's auditor asks. And RFID traceability that hands factories the order-to-lot data buyers must report under CSRD and the Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive (CSDDD). One purchase order, one evidence chain, no midnight scramble.

Textile Today: You have experience with a global technology company like Oracle and are now leading a manufacturing business. How has your technology experience influenced your approach to the Textile Industry?

Dr. Aminul Haque: People assume a technology background means running a factory like a software company. My way was slower and more human. At Oracle I was Director for Southeast Asia's growing countries and the Indochina region — years inside large enterprises, watching technology programmes succeed or fail for reasons that had little to do with software. Lesson one: data discipline.

An enterprise application system is only as good as the master data beneath it, so we treat material data with the same care Oracle applied to customer data. Lesson two: adoption. My research put a number on what I kept seeing there — technology choice barely predicts success; implementation quality predicts almost everything. Lesson three: AI, where most of my own learning is going. We use it as a tool, not a showpiece — predictive analysis to see demand and quality problems early, and workflow automation that removes manual steps, which shows up as operational efficiency and happier customers.