The luxury British brand burned £28.6million of stock including clothes, bags and £10.4 million of beauty cosmetics according to the companies annual report.
Burberry set fire to millions pounds worth of stock in order to stop counterfeiters getting hold of their products or selling them for cheaper than the original retail price.
According to reports, Burberry has destroyed over £90million of its products within the past five years, causing uproar within environmental groups. Many disappointed at their lack of product donations to charity.
The brand stated that the destruction of their cosmetics was a one-off due to a licence agreement with Coty’s beauty company. Together with this they’ve joined Ellen MacArthur’s ‘Make Fashion Circular’ Foundation in order to prevent such high amounts of waste within fashion.
With Burberrys sales increasing over the recent months and sales hitting £2.9billion creating a yearly profit upwards of £470million the money wasted on burning their own stock barely effects their figures.
Destroying products has started to become a common trend within the fashion industry in order to protect brands. Last year it came to light that high-street store H&M supplied a Swedish power plant with clothes to burn instead of using coal. Although the H&M team stated that anything burned at the plant was ‘destroyed’ by either mould or contamination beforehand and was unsafe to wear.