Inside Jiuwang's Phnom Penh facility — why we built it, how it divides work with our Chinese headquarters, and which orders belong on its lines.
Jiuwang Flax Century operates a WRAP- and BCI-certified hat factory in Phnom Penh, Cambodia. Opened in 2025, the 8,000-square-meter facility employs 500 workers across four production lines and produces around 5 million hats per year — primarily straw hats and cloth hats, including bucket hats — shipped under FOB Phnom Penh, CIF, or DDP terms. It is the company's second plant, alongside the original factory in Wenling, Zhejiang, China, where Jiuwang was founded in 1987, and it gives US and EU brands a Cambodia country-of-origin option without switching suppliers. Complex constructions — ribbon hats, braid hats, and fedoras — remain with the Wenling headquarters.
This page covers what buyers ask us most: why headwear production is moving to Cambodia in the first place, how the Phnom Penh plant divides work with our Chinese headquarters, which audits and certificates stand behind it, how shipping from Phnom Penh actually works, and which orders belong on the Cambodia line.
The short answer is landed cost and sourcing policy, in that order.
Headwear entering the United States is classified under HTS headings 6502, 6504, or 6505, depending on how the hat is constructed — plaited straw bodies, sewn braid, or knitted and woven textile. The duty you pay depends on that classification and on the country of origin. China-origin headwear has carried additional tariff layers in recent years; Cambodia-origin goods are assessed on their own terms. We deliberately do not print duty rates on this page because they change faster than web pages do. Ask your customs broker to run your exact style against HTS 6502/6504/6505 for both origins before you commit a program — for many US buyers, the difference is the whole business case.
The second driver is policy from the buying side. Several large US retailers now ask their suppliers to show capacity outside China, not as a preference but as a condition of program awards. A second origin in the supplier's own hands — same company, same spec sheets, same QC standard — is easier to approve than a new, unknown vendor.
One caution we give every buyer: origin follows manufacturing, not labeling. A hat is Cambodian because it was substantially made in Cambodia. In Phnom Penh we cut, sew, block, trim, finish, and pack; shipments are documented with Cambodian certificates of origin. If a supplier offers you "Cambodia origin" from a plant that only does final-step assembly, that risk lands on the importer of record — you.
We opened the Phnom Penh facility in 2025 after several years of planning. It runs four production lines on a newer machine park than our Chinese factory — the advantage of buying equipment in 2024 rather than accumulating it since 1987 — and was laid out from day one for high-volume repeat programs of the kind we run for retail customers such as Costco, Walmart, and T.J.Maxx. Its lines are dedicated to straw hats and cloth hats, including bucket hats; complex constructions such as ribbon hats, braid hats, and fedoras run at our Wenling headquarters.
The plant does not operate as a discount branch of the Wenling headquarters. Specs, tolerances, inline QC checkpoints, and final inspection AQLs are identical across both sites; what differs is the mission each factory carries. We wrote about how we keep two factories on one standard in Two Factories, One Standard.
Between the two sites, total capacity is 8 million+ pieces per year across straw, braid, and bucket hats — plus fedoras, ribbon hats, and woven bags — drawing on a library of 17 natural, synthetic, and paper fibers.
The Phnom Penh facility is WRAP and BCI certified. WRAP (Worldwide Responsible Accredited Production) is the audit most US retail compliance teams ask about first for Southeast Asian garment and accessory plants, covering labor practices, health and safety, environmental controls, and security. BCI (Better Cotton Initiative) supports cotton traceability for the cloth-hat programs that run on the Phnom Penh lines.
At company level, Jiuwang additionally holds BSCI, ISO 9001, ISO 14001, and OEKO-TEX certifications, with Sedex/SMETA audit history, and we routinely host third-party inspections through SGS, Intertek, and QIMA. If your compliance program requires its own social audit of the Phnom Penh site, we schedule those as a normal part of onboarding — most of our retail programs began exactly that way. For a look inside our workshops, visit the factory gallery.
Certificates are supplied with current validity dates during quotation. If you need audit reports shared through a specific platform (Sedex, retailer portals), tell us in the first email and we will confirm what we can release.
Our standard term for Cambodia production is FOB Phnom Penh; CIF and DDP are available on request, and China-made goods ship FOB Ningbo. All quotations are valid for 30 days.
Cambodian export cargo moves along two main routes: containers barged from Phnom Penh's river port to deep-sea transshipment hubs, or trucked to the Sihanoukville deep-water port for direct sailings. Which routing we book depends on your destination, carrier space, and how your program's delivery windows fall. Plan for somewhat longer total transit than a direct Ningbo sailing, and treat the exact schedule as a quotation item — we confirm current transit windows with your target delivery date when we quote, not from a generic table.
Two practical notes buyers appreciate knowing early:
We assign production honestly, because misassigned orders cost both sides money.
The common path: develop and launch through Wenling, then migrate to Phnom Penh once the style proves itself and volumes justify Cambodia origin. Same company, same spec sheet, no re-sourcing.
Talk to us — or email info@cn-hat.com with your style references and target quantities, and we will tell you plainly which factory your program belongs in.