WOOL QUALITY

You will see on our price list that we refer to our Tasman and Carato Wools as 100% Virgin Merino, the reason for this, is as follows. Over the past number of years much of the wool processing for New Zealand and Australia has been moved offshore to China and India. This has meant in some cases the way the Yarn is made and processed is not what it use to be, wool is graded in Micron the higher the number the lower the quality, for example 28-40 micron is generally the grade they use in wool Carpets and 26 is generally used in blended yarns like Wool/Nylons and Wool/Acrylics and Craft yarns, as you go lower in number you get to the Fashion market who will generally as a rule use 20.5 Micron to 17.5 Micron, when you go below that you are generally moving into the super expensive Italian suit area ,designer blankets, very exclusive knitwear etc which can retail in the many thousands of dollars up to the 10s of thousand per item, in 2003-4 a bale of wool was produced at 11 microns, the 90 kilo bale was said to be worth more than $1 Million dollars. So in moving production to countries like India and China where they either process into top to be brought back to be spun into yarn or process it all the way to Yarn form, a number of things have changed one being the Wool Grading, when we say 100% Virgin Merino we mean that all the fibre that makes up the yarn is of one micronage, unfortunately in their endeavour to make cheaper versions of fine European Wools, some process as follows, they will take several different microns 26,24,20,21 and mix them all together then they will take the weighted average and that’s the Micron that lot of wool will be labelled. Obviously when mixing all these different microns of wool, the consistency of the quality of wool can vary, this is why we choose to stock European Wools we believe you should get what you pay for. While we cannot guarantee the fleece used to make our Yarns is of New Zealand origin. Italian and German Wool yarn producers do source raw product from New Zealand, Australia, and South Africa. New Zealand no longer has a major Worsted Wool spinning operation that we believe can produce these fine counts to that exacting Quality and standard . There are rumours of such a Mill being Built down South and we do hope that does come about, hopefully that will allow us to Stock New Zealand made Fine Worsted Woollen Fashion and Handkniting Yarns.