Insight Junction

By Kieran Kearey 26/10/25 5 min read

Welcome to business breakdown episode four. This series is a longer version of my Instagram series “Business Breakdown In 60 Seconds”, where I provide information about a business, such as who their current CEO is, who founded the company, controversial news or general facts about the business, etc. But here on the blog, I will dive just a little bit deeper into each business.

As the title says, episode four is about Primark.

*This information is purely an objective view based on information taken from internet research*

Table Of Contents –

*Click on each heading to go to that section*

• What is Primark?
• Current CEO
• Poor Ethical Rating
• Fast Fashion, Carbon Emissions and water depletion
• Child Labour
• Sources

What is Primark?

Primark is a discount fashion chain that also sells homeware and accessories. Primark was founded in Dublin, Ireland in 1969, and is now a global brand. Primark was initially founded under the name “Penneys” by Arthur Ryan, and the brand still trades under that name in the Republic of Ireland.

Current CEO

Primark’s’ current interim CEO is Eoin Tonge, this is because earlier this year, Primark’s former CEO Paul Marchant, resigned from their position earlier this year after allegations “made by an individual about his behaviour towards her in a social environment”, according to numerous sources (Source 1, Source 2, Source 3)

Poor Ethical Rating

To start, The Good Shopping Guide has ranked Primark 44 out of 100 in their ethical performance GSG score (the benchmark is 70). The GSG Ethical score is created based on findings throughout several categories. We can see that on The Good Shopping Guide, Primark is rated based on the following: Environment (Environmental Report, Organic, Better Cotton initiative, Fossil Fuels), Animal (Animal Welfare), People (Armaments, Code of Conduct, Political Donations, Ethical Trading Schemes, Human Rights, Human Rights+) and Other (Ethical Accreditation, Other Criticisms). Out of this list, six of the sub categories received a GSG Bottom Rating, and the rest a GSG Top Rating.

This website is worth a proper read as it contains lots of interesting information on Primark, but we’ll be covering just one part (other than the GSG score), which is a report from 2021 that suggests up to 1000 workers in a factory in Myanmar (part of Primark’s’ supply chain) were locked inside the factory by managers for hours to stop them from taking part in pro-democracy demonstrations, which is also a claim supported by The Guardian. Furthermore, The Good Shopping Guide reported that workers in the same factory were “frequently threatened” with termination if they refused to take on more shifts or complete unreasonable workloads.

Fast Fashion, Carbon Emissions and water depletion

According to the WWF, “Fast fashion is the highly profitable global industry that mass-produces cheap, low-quality clothes and accessories.”. According to Just Style, Primark is not only a fast fashion business, but it is “a titan” of the fast fashion industry that encourages a culture of disposability. This article says that the industry accounts for a “significant portion” of global carbon emissions and that Primark is at the “forefront of this environmental assault”

Something else mentioned in this article is the significant depletion of water on the planet, mainly because of the cultivation of cotton which is known for it’s large water consumption. From this, you can imagine the impact a company like Primark has on the planet. To aid this imagination, lets look at some statistics from Oxfam. Oxfam’s article contains research that found the following: “buying one new white cotton shirt produces the same emissions as driving a car for 35 miles” and “The emissions from all the new clothes bought in the UK each month are greater than those from flying a plane around the world 900 times”. live frankly and the United Nations also have a statistic: “It takes between 7,500 – 15,000 litres of water to make a single pair of jeans”

Child Labour at Primark

Going back to 2008, Primark was accused of using child labour in their supply chain. Specifically, in an article from The Guardian, its said that there had been evidence of an 11-year-old girl in a refugee camp making Primark clothing items. Furthermore, in the same article, it was suggested that Primark new nothing about child labour in their supply chain and quickly fired three of their suppliers in India after learning of this evidence.

There is also another article from The Guardian published a day prior to the above paragraph that relates to it.

After this horrific incident, you would have thought that Primark would have done a check on it’s entire supply chain to ensure nothing like that ever happens again. Unfortunately, just a year later, a Primark shopper found a note in their Primark clothing item written in Chinese asking for help. According to the BBC, the note said that inmates were forced to work 15 hours a day making clothes. Later in the same article, Primark’s statement on this made it seem like they were sceptical of the note and its authenticity (in my opinion) and said that inspections had been carried out since 2009 and there had been no prison or forced labour found.

Sources

https://www.theguardian.com/business/2025/mar/31/primark-boss-paul-marchant-resigns-after-womans-allegation

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c934pzekdz9o

https://www.thisismoney.co.uk/money/markets/article-14574497/Primark-scandal-hasten-corporate-split.html

https://thegoodshoppingguide.com/brand-directory/primark/

https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2021/mar/13/primark-supplier-accused-of-locking-workers-in-factory-in-myanmar-protests

https://www.wwf.org.uk/articles/fast-fashion-disaster?utm_source=Grants&utm_medium=PaidSearch-Brand&pc=AWS014007&gclsrc=aw.ds&gad_source=1&gad_campaignid=6475886760&gbraid=0AAAAAD5l45BpVMi-cAmxqH-aV0YlH3jNc&gclid=CjwKCAjwjffHBhBuEiwAKMb8pJgUeSqUwSp1F6pNJGqmZTQouRbjPGkTktZsp2Kkr-_C95aKrHx9DBoCAh8QAvD_BwE

https://www.just-style.com/analyst-comment/ethical-dilemma-shopping-primark/

https://www.oxfam.org.uk/media/press-releases/fast-fashion-produces-more-carbon-emissions-per-minute-than-driving-a-car-around-the-world-six-times-oxfam/

https://livefrankly.co.uk/sustainable-fashion/primark-ethics-is-it-really-better/

https://news.un.org/en/story/2019/03/1035161

https://www.theguardian.com/business/2008/jun/23/primark.children

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2008/jun/22/india.humanrights

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-northern-ireland-28018137