OUR CASHMERE STORY #4

OUR PROCESS

Did you know that only 15% of Mongolian cashmere is kept inside Mongolia to produce garments, we champion and support keeping cashmere production inside Mongolia to support the Mongolian people and its economy. We are currently working with the fairtrade organisation to partner on a project to create an ethical fair trade certification for the cashmere manufacturing industry.

  • SCOUR (WASH)

    The cashmere hairs are washed in a closed loop water system, whereby the water once used is cleaned with a water supplying partner and re-used again within the factory.

    DEHAIRING

    First the cashmere hair is separated into 2 groups through a mechanical process called dehairing. Guard hair (coarse) and pure hair (fine), the guard coarse hairs are used within our factory on to a network of bedding businesses as in Mongolia many duvets filling is made from cashmere hair. Did you know that only 10% of Mongolian cashmere hair is classed as white, and it is only these pure white cashmere hairs that can be dyed bright into colours just like Brodie designs.

    DYING

    We use non-toxic dye ISO accredited colours in our fibre dying process that are custom made in Europe (Huntsman dyes used from Switzerland). We also use a low number of colours to dye and blend our fibres to create our desired shades. This ensures that we can create many colours by using fewer dyes, we know the more complex the colour the more chemicals are required so we stick to our blended hair for colour approach.


    CARDING & SPINNING

    We then card and spin our fibres into yarn, firstly the fibres pass through a Carding mechanical process to create a roving yarn, the roving yarn is then transferred onto a spinning mule to add twist into the yarn. Over the last 10 years we have trialled and tested many combinations of twists to create a premium quality yarn.

    *Carding is the mechanical process where the fibres are aligned vertically to then rub gently to create a roving yarn

    KNITTING

    We produce the garments using the very latest, technologically advanced knitting machines from Shima Seki (Japan) and Stoll (Germany).

In terms of powering the factories we are collaborating on finding
split energy sources so that we can start supplying a percentage
of the electric power through solar, wind and water energy.