CROSSBRED wool in innovative blends will offer new textile choices to furniture manufacturers and end-users, according to a United Kingdom processor.
Camira Fabrics Ltd in West Yorkshire is the processor of a unique wool-jute blend upholstery fabric called Wojo conceived in New Zealand and to be used in 16,000 Starbucks stores globally.
Camira Fabrics Ltd marketing manager Ian Burn said only a few hundred metres of WoJo have so far been produced for sampling and installation in flagship Starbucks’ coffee shops, but the potential volumes are enormous. Wojo was launched on Savile Row in London during a Wool Week promotion last month.
Mr Burn said the independent textile solutions company designs and manufactures contract upholstery fabrics for commercial interiors and mass passenger transport clients. It sells about eight million metres of fabric per year in about 80 countries.
The company’s speciality is innovative performance fabrics with a strong environmental focus, he said. It makes fabrics from woollen spun and wool worsted yarns as well as wool moquettes, and – uniquely – blends wool with other natural fibres obtained from bast fibre plants such as nettles, hemp and jute. It has a dedicated environmental brand called Second Nature.
Mr Burn said wool has suffered at the expense of synthetics, but initiatives such as the Campaign for Wool and imaginative new environmental applications can only help shift the emphasis back to natural fibres.
The use of bast fibres in textiles, and wool-bast fibre blends, has been around for decades, but with the price driven rise of cotton and synthetics, competence in both product supply and manufacture of the bast materials has been lost, he said.
“Nettle fibre was used in both Scotland and Germany in the 19th and first half of the 20th centuries, but as other fibre types became more popular they were gradually usurped.
“The project to develop a wool-nettle fabric involved agricultural research into nettle cultivation, harvesting and fibre extraction as well as scientific research into selection of high fibre nettle clones.”
The durable and flame retardant wool-nettle fabric called Sting was developed with academic partner De Montfort University in Leicester and UK government funding. It won the Queen’s Award for Sustainable Development.
Mr Burn said most of Camira’s contract wool fabrics used wool around the 29 micron count for uses in areas such as commercial offices, education, cinema and hospitality, where durability performance is a key requirement.
“Our transport fabrics for bus, coach and rail use 31 micron wool.
“We sell over 2.5 million metres of wool based fabrics per year,” he said.
