Factory gets first LEED gold rating in Kingdom
Factory gets first LEED gold rating in Kingdom
Hong Kong-based Luen Thai Holdings Ltd’s (Luenthai) newest venture, the XO Tex Industrial Co Ltd garment factory in the capital, is the first building in Cambodia to earn “gold” certification under the US Green Building Council’s (USGBC) LEED v4 Building and Construction (BD+C) rating system.
“This building is a 25,000sqm facility designed to employ 10,000 staff, producing garments for well-known international sports brands,” Luenthai said in a press release.
Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED), the most widely used green building rating system in the world, has four possible levels of certification – certified, silver, gold and platinum, according to the USGBC.
The updated LEED v4’s rating criteria is the most stringent yet, Luenthai’s said, hailing the recent gold certification as an illustration of a “commitment to sustainability” on its part and that of XO Tex Industrial.
Luenthai went on to say that the XO Tex Industrial plant is “able to achieve exemplary performance in terms of energy efficiency with the installation of direct evaporative cooling systems, LED lighting, and a solar photovoltaic [PV] installation designed to generate 10 per cent of the annual energy consumption of the operation.
“The architectural design was thoroughly considered to optimise daylight in order to reduce lighting demands and improve visual comfort,” according to the company.
In a bid to reduce the building’s carbon footprint by 1,151 tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent (CO2e) annually and create the healthiest work environment for its employees, it said energy and water consumption are carefully sub metered throughout the entire facility to ensure any outliers are quickly identified and resolved.
The “holistic” practices used from the initial stages of the design process also led to the “outstanding performance in LEED Certification”, with the project team from Luenthai and XO Tex Industrial working closely together with design-build contractor Vision Builders Ltd and Sustainability Consultants Blue Snow Energy Co Ltd to define the sustainability goals and develop a clear plan on how to achieve them.
“A unique feature of this garment production facility is the regulation size football pitch on the rooftop, which is the brainchild of the football-crazed C-suite,” who would regularly enjoy a match with employees prior to the Covid-19 pandemic, it said.
The senior executives “even have their own social football programme and club called XO United FC, designed to bring kids off the street and onto the pitch, with a vision of ‘changing Cambodia’s youth one goal at a time’”, it added.
