In late July, employees at French fashion technology company Lectra’s Bordeaux-Cestas campus were told to stay home, as wildfires blazed across the southwestern region of Gironde, burning an area roughly fourfold the size of Paris in less than four days.
Of around 800 Lectra employees, 200 were evacuated from their homes, joining a total of 220,000 across the region forced to seek refuge as authorities struggled to control the flames. Lectra says it expects the long-term impact on operations from the three-day closure to be negligible. But Lectra wasn’t the only company affected, and nor will it be the last.
Disruption from wildfires cascades throughout fashion supply chains, from raw material cultivation to manufacturing. Cestas is a major industrial zone, home to other companies such as Le Roy Logistique, GXO Logistics France, Cdiscount, and La Poste, all of which support fashion brands with services including distribution, inventory management, warehousing, and logistics. Delays to deliveries during a crucial sales period and smoke damage are among concerns.
Though staggering in their devastation, the wildfires impacting operations in Cestas are one part of a bigger picture that’s defined the summer. Across the EU, 1,407 wildfires (and counting) have been detected since the start of the year, burning 434,976 hectares — far surpassing the 346,836 hectares burnt in 2025. Fire and rescue services in England and Wales have responded to 706 wildfires so far in 2026. Argentina, Greece, Spain, Canada, and the US are among many other countries that have been battling their own wildfires.
Beachgoers sit on the coast of Moutchic in Lacanau as clouds of wildfire smoke rise into the sky.
Photo: Getty Images
“Wildfires have always been a natural hazard, but the frequency of fires and the extreme fire behavior has greatly accelerated, certainly in recent decades, and much of that is being driven by climate change,” says Jonathan Porter, chief meteorologist at forecasting services company AccuWeather.
The impacts of climate change are no longer abstract future projections; they are a current reality that both citizens and businesses must adapt to, and businesses are calculating climate risks as a result. What does that mean for wildfires’ threats to supply chains?
Understanding the risks
“The feeling of living through a fire is incomparable,” says Antonio Tucci, a regenerative livestock farmer and trainer who is part of the Commonland network. Tucci’s farm in Vilariño de Conso, Galicia, northwestern Spain, saw intense wildfires in August 2025. “You don’t just see the danger of your house burning; you see the danger to your own life, because you try to stay with the animals until the last possible moment. But above all, you watch the very land that sustains you burn. Of the 160 hectares of communal land we use, only 20 were saved in last year’s wildfires. What people don’t understand is that many of us feel our means of production slipping away.”
