Cotton canvas, plastic sheeting and relief tents, direct from the factory OXFAM has bought from for thirty years.
Babson & Noller Corporation has been a steady supplier to OXFAM and partner INGOs since the mid-1990s, across WASH-cluster shelter, plastic sheeting in the IFRC standard, and double-fly relief tents for post-disaster and conflict-displacement responses. Direct manufacturer, single legal entity from cutting floor to country-of-origin certificate.
Past supply · Pakistan floods 2010 (multi-agency) · Yemen / Syria stockpile · 2022 Pakistan super-flood
Programme budgets have shrunk; the demand has not.
WFP cut 6,000 staff. UNHCR cut 5,000 positions, 185 field offices. Yet the 2026 appeal still targets 87M people on a hyper-prioritised $23B budget. OXFAM partners on shelter clusters from Gaza to Sudan to Afghanistan continue to face the same acute supply gap that's pushed OCHA to flag 20,000 households a week receiving NFIs in lieu of actual shelter. BNC has been a Karachi-based FRT-spec manufacturer for three decades, ISO 9001, with a 72-hour airlift profile from Karachi when stock is on the floor — which it usually is.
Source: OCHA Sit Reps · Refugees International · The New Humanitarian
Three campaigns where BNC tents went into the field through OXFAM channels.
Pakistan floods · 2010
Multi-agency consolidation through OXFAM, ICRC and the WFP cluster during the 2010 monsoon flood response. Tents and tarpaulins moved to Sindh and Punjab in two waves over six months. Order book that year set the BNC monthly production peak.
Yemen and Syria stockpile rotation · multi-year
Multi-year stockpile rotation through OXFAM and partner INGOs across both theatres. Re-stock cycles manageable even when active conflict pauses. The factory keeps canvas in stock against the next appeal, not the last one.
Pakistan super-flood · 2022
Tent-and-tarpaulin combination through partner INGOs operating under the WASH and shelter cluster mandates. Some of those tarpaulins are still in field service in the more remote union councils, the test that matters more than any spec sheet.
WASH-cluster shelter and IFRC-standard sheeting
Direct manufacturer, single legal entity from cutting floor to country-of-origin certificate. No trader mark-up, no second factory we subcontract to in China. The product on the container is the product the supplier-qualification team can come and inspect at the same address.
IFRC-standard plastic sheeting, 4m × 5m and 4m × 6m formats, reinforced eyelets, in stock Cotton canvas relief tents, double-fly construction, treated walls, mosquito mesh Tarpaulin retrofit kits for flood-damaged housing WASH-cluster compatible water tank and sanitation marquee covers (custom on request) Per-container manifest, supplier ISO 9001 documentation, country-of-origin matches manufacturing site
"When there is an emergency, the agencies that buy tents go to whoever has stock and can deliver. Whether you are on a registry or not is secondary. We have supplied OXFAM and many other UN bodies directly across thirty years, because we keep canvas in stock and ship the day the order lands." Syed Rayhan Ahmad · Managing Director · BNC, Karachi
Capability statement, ready to share with the qualification team.
If your team in Oxford or one of the regional offices is preparing the next stockpile rotation, sourcing for an active appeal, or evaluating Pakistani manufacturers for the supplier roster, we can quote on the same business day in Karachi. Capability statement PDF below; ISO 9001 and three-decade procurement history available on qualification request.
Download the BNC Oxfam Readiness Kit
Spec compliance, production capacity, QA flow, shipping lanes — sized for your category team to read in 10 minutes. Email-gated. Reply within one Karachi business day.
I'm with OXFAM (or a partner INGO operating under an OXFAM appeal) and would like to discuss procurement.
Tell us volume, destination, INCOTERMS, and which spec you are working to. We come back the same business day in Karachi (overnight for Geneva, same-day for Copenhagen and Dubai) with a quote and the relevant certifications attached.