Doors open at 8:00 am. Please join us in the main foyer of Cinnamon Life at City of Dreams for coffee, tea, and light pastries while you check in. Take some time to explore the exhibition area and connect with fellow attendees before the day begins.

Please have your QR code and a valid ID ready for check-in. If you are unable to locate your QR code, please contact events@cascale.org for support.

We invite you to head to the Main Stage by 8:50 am. Programming will begin promptly at 9:00 am.

Our emcee, Senuri Munasinghe, will officially open the Forum and welcome participants to Colombo. She will introduce the event theme, Action by Design: Accelerating a Fairer, More Resilient Value Chain, and outline what to expect over the course of the Forum.

This welcome will also cover a few practical notes, including how to use the event app to follow the program, engage in sessions, and navigate the different formats across the agenda.

The Cascale Forum is designed as a working space for the industry. This opening sets the tone for two days of practical discussion, shared learning, and honest dialogue between brands, manufacturers, and partners focused on turning intention into action.

Presentation | Informative

The Cascale Forum opens with a high-level address from a senior leader, grounding the two day event in the national and regional context in which this work actually happens. This is not a ceremonial welcome, but a signal that climate action, decent work, and industrial transformation are shared priorities and shared responsibilities.

Panel | Informative

In this open, forward-looking conversation, Cascale CEO Harsh Saini and Worldly CEO Scott Raskin will discuss how primary data, collaboration, and accountability are reshaping global supply chains and business strategy. They’ll reflect on where the industry stands today—and what must come next.

Hosted by Worldly

Panel | Informative

What happens when climate risk is treated as a core business issue rather than a sustainability add-on? What enables companies to maintain stability and trust in the face of disruption, and where do current brand–manufacturer engagement models still fall short?

Across the Asia-Pacific region, climate disruption including severe flooding is already affecting manufacturing operations, supply reliability, and business decisions. This session brings together industry leaders from Sri Lanka to examine how climate risk is shaping sourcing strategies, investment choices, and long-term competitiveness, and why stronger, more intentional collaboration across the value chain is now a business imperative.

Panel | Interactive

Decarbonization commitments are rising, but progress on the ground remains uneven. In South Asia, results are shaped not only by operating conditions and investment constraints, but by how brands and manufacturers work together day to day.

This panel brings together leaders from manufacturing, brands, and solution partners to share candid, real-world experiences from the region. Speakers will discuss where collaboration is unlocking progress and which areas show promise for decarbonization. The conversation will focus on the examples which can have real impact for manufacturing in the South Asian region.

Presentation | Informative

Grounded in real-world supply chain data, this session highlights how companies are getting key insights and AI-driven intelligence about their supply chains. Hear how those learnings are shaping the evolution of the Worldly platform to better support informed, resilient decision-making.

Hosted by Worldly

Training | Interactive

This masterclass is designed for facilities and brands looking to build real confidence in using Higg FEM 4.0.

The training will offer hands-on guidance across key sections of Higg FEM 4.0, delivered by multiple trainers with deep, practical experience. Participants will work through how to interpret questions, understand common pitfalls, and approach scoring and documentation in a way that reflects on-the-ground realities.

Facility Tools staff will be available throughout the session for live Q&A, giving attendees the opportunity to raise specific challenges and clarify how to apply the tool in practice. This is a working session for those responsible for completing, reviewing, or supporting Higg FEM assessments.

Participants will receive a Cascale Forum–specific certificate of participation at the completion of this course.

Workshop | Interactive

Supplier participation is essential to scaling responsible purchasing and yet many suppliers remain uncertain how Better Buying results are used, what value participation creates for them, or how their feedback translates into action. Without trust, transparency, and clear benefit, participation will remain uneven.

This facilitated design roundtable focuses on closing the loop from a supplier perspective. Participants will work together to define what suppliers need to see, receive, and understand in order to trust the process, engage proactively, and use Better Buying insights meaningfully at the factory level.

Rather than reviewing scores, the session concentrates on experience design: how results are communicated, what aggregation is useful, what transparency feels safe, and how Cascale can strengthen supplier-facing reporting and engagement without increasing risk. Outputs will directly inform the evolution of Better Buying’s participation model and supplier communications.

Small Group Roundtable | Interactive

This small group roundtable discussion creates space for an open, practical discussion on how sourcing decisions shape human rights due diligence outcomes in practice. The conversation will focus on how timelines, pricing, forecasting, and buyer expectations interact with HRDD systems, and how these dynamics are experienced by manufacturers on the ground.

The discussion will also examine the disconnect that often exists between sourcing and sustainability teams, and how misalignment between these functions can create mixed signals, added burden, or unintended consequences for manufacturers. Bringing together brands, manufacturers, and policy perspectives the roundtable will explore where sourcing practices support effective due diligence, where they unintentionally undermine it, and what more aligned approaches could look like.

The goal is to surface real experiences, identify pressure points, and gather insights on how sourcing models and HRDD expectations can better reinforce each other.

Presentation | Interactive

Led by Cascale’s Expert Higg Index Facility Tools Team, this session will share Higg FEM data insights from 2025 and earlier, with a focus on South Asia, including India, Sri Lanka, Pakistan, and Bangladesh, alongside regional trends across SAARC.

The session will highlight key performance trends, common gaps, and areas of progress that Higg FEM users look for each year, helping participants better understand how facilities and brands across the region are performing and where attention is needed.

Presentation | Interactive

This interactive panel provides an overview of key activities undertaken in 2025 to strengthen the Higg FEM verification program, with a focus on what these efforts mean for quality, consistency, and trust in the data.

The session will highlight what has changed, what has worked, and where improvements have had the greatest impact on verification integrity. It will also offer a high-level look ahead at what participants can expect in the coming year, creating space for questions, reflection, and dialogue with the teams involved.

Designed to be interactive, the discussion invites participants to engage on how verification continues to evolve and how these changes support more credible, usable environmental performance data across the value chain.

Workshop | Interactive

This interactive workshop explores what effective climate partnership between manufacturers and their brand customers looks like in practice. The session will focus on the behaviors between brands and manufacturers that shape climate outcomes across sourcing, purchasing practices, and supply chain engagement.

Through facilitated discussion, participants will examine how these behaviors are currently understood and measured, where gaps remain, and what manufacturers need from brands to meet shared climate goals.

This session introduces the APAC Policy Priorities Paper, developed by Cascale’s APAC Policy MET Editorial Team and shaped by contributions from manufacturers, service providers, affiliates, and multi-stakeholder partners across the region.

Grounded in on-the-ground experience, the paper identifies a small set of priority policy challenges facing the consumer goods value chain in APAC, along with clear messages for policymakers and practical recommendations tailored to different country contexts. The session will highlight why these issues matter for manufacturers and brands today, how they connect to Cascale’s strategic pillars, and where regional voices can most effectively influence policy dialogue.

The discussion will also create space to reflect on how these priorities can be used as a shared tool for engagement, collaboration, and advocacy, both regionally and globally.

Workshop | Interactive

Effective brand-supplier partnership is critical to achieving sustainability and business goals. In this session, Worldly will share with brands best practices to develop a supplier engagement strategy. Learn the 3 key steps your brand should take to make the most effective supplier engagement program through transparency, shared accountability, and finding long-term value across your supply chain.

Hosted by Worldly

Panel | Interactive

This strategic panel centers supplier perspectives to inform better system design. Manufacturers will reflect on purchasing behaviors that most directly contribute to factory-level challenges, including non-compliance, workforce instability, and operational strain. The discussion will make clear the cause-and-effect links between commercial decisions and on-the-ground outcomes.

By surfacing these connections, the session reframes responsible purchasing as a preventative, system-level intervention that reduces risk, strengthens compliance, and supports more resilient manufacturing operations. The ultimate goal is to identify where system design must evolve to enable decent work at scale.

Panel | Interactive

Manufacturers are doing much of the work when it comes to environmental sustainability, but their day-to-day experience is not always reflected in industry conversations. This session puts South Asian manufacturers at the center to talk openly about how environmental commitments are playing out on the factory floor, what is working, what is difficult, and what still feels misaligned.

Based on hands-on experience using tools such as the Higg Facility Environmental Module (FEM), panelists will share how expectations are translated into real actions, where gaps between brand requirements and operational reality show up, and how learning from peers can make implementation easier and more effective.

The focus is on practical experience rather than compliance. By hearing directly from manufacturers, the session aims to support more honest conversations, clearer expectations, and more workable approaches to improving environmental performance across the value chain.

Panel | Interactive

Cascale has supported 57 manufacturers across Cohorts 1 and 2 in developing decarbonization roadmaps through the Manufacturer Climate Action Plan (MCAP).

In this session, we will also recognize and celebrate the manufacturers who have successfully completed the program, acknowledging the leadership and commitment required to translate climate ambition into a structured plan.

Participants will hear directly from manufacturers who have been part of the process. What did they learn along the way? What worked well, and what would they approach differently? Has their decarbonization roadmap proven to be practical and actionable? And now that a plan is in place, what comes next?

This session will offer honest reflections, practical insights, and clear next steps for manufacturers looking to move from planning to implementation.

Small Group Roundtable | Interactive

This small group roundtable discussion creates space for an open, practical discussion on how sourcing decisions shape human rights due diligence outcomes in practice. The conversation will focus on how timelines, pricing, forecasting, and buyer expectations interact with HRDD systems, and how these dynamics are experienced by manufacturers on the ground.

The discussion will also examine the disconnect that often exists between sourcing and sustainability teams, and how misalignment between these functions can create mixed signals, added burden, or unintended consequences for manufacturers. Bringing together brands, manufacturers, and policy perspectives the roundtable will explore where sourcing practices support effective due diligence, where they unintentionally undermine it, and what more aligned approaches could look like.

The goal is to surface real experiences, identify pressure points, and gather insights on how sourcing models and HRDD expectations can better reinforce each other.

Panel | Informative

As expectations around chemical and wastewater management continue to grow, brands and manufacturers are navigating overlapping tools, audits, and reporting requirements. This session explores how Cascale and ZDHC are working toward greater alignment through joint verification.

The discussion will focus on how Higg FEM and ZDHC complement each other in practice, particularly around wastewater and chemical management, and how convergence can help reduce audit fatigue while strengthening environmental performance. Speakers will share where alignment is already delivering value, what the joint verification journey looks like, and what brands and manufacturers should expect as this work evolves.

Rather than introducing new requirements, the session aims to clarify how better coordination between Higg FEM and ZDHC can support more efficient assessments, clearer signals, and improved outcomes on the ground.

This session addresses the 2026 reality where social compliance has transitioned from voluntary ethics to a critical legal mandate. As major markets enforce “guilty-until-proven-innocent” standards, policy experts within the apparel and textile industry will provide a comprehensive analysis of the EU’s CSDDD/Omnibus I and Forces Labour Ban, the intensifying US Uyghur Forced Labour Prevention Act (UFLPA) enforcement, and the emerging labour reforms across APAC.

After a quick overview from each speaker, the audience will have the opportunity to learn firsthand from the policy experts.

Panel | Interactive

Financing is a critical piece of decarbonization, but for many manufacturers the challenge goes beyond access to capital. This session looks at decarbonization finance from the supplier perspective, focusing on where investments are beginning to work in practice and what conditions make them viable.

The discussion will examine common hurdles such as long payback periods, uncertainty around long-term brand commitments, and operational risk during implementation. Panelists will also highlight approaches that are helping address these challenges, including alternative financing structures, shared-risk models, and stronger coordination between brands, manufacturers, and finance providers.

The conversation will draw out practical lessons from across the industry. What kinds of signals from brands help unlock investment? How can risk be reduced during early implementation? What support is needed beyond capital alone?

Designed as a solutions-oriented discussion, this session aims to identify practical ways to make decarbonization financing work better for manufacturers and to point toward approaches that can be scaled more broadly across the industry.

Roundtable | Interactive

Join us for a special Evening Program taking place alongside the Cascale Forum: Colombo 2026 — an inspiring celebration of culture, creativity, and innovation in sustainable apparel.This curated evening program brings together Forum participants for an engaging blend of networking, artistic expression, and forward-looking dialogue. The reception will open with drinks and small bites, offering attendees a relaxed setting to connect with peers across the value chain. The program will then move into the Main Stage for a traditional Sri Lankan dance performance, Muddrika Dance Troupe, showcasing the rich cultural heritage of the host country.

Agenda

6:00 PM – Networking: Drinks and small bites in the foyer area
6:30 PM – Entertainment: Muddrika Dance Troupe
6:40 PM – Panel Discussion – Sustainable Design in Apparel
6:55 PM – Fashion Show: Hosted by University of Moratuwa + Hirdaramani Apparel & A&E
7:15 PM – Networking: Drinks and small bites in the foyer area
8:00 PM – Reception Ends