Wool into Yarn

Once the raw wool has been through our wool scour, the next step is to turn this clean wool into dyed yarn suitable for tufting into carpet.   Cavalier Bremworth has two spinning and dyeing mills - one in Wanganui and one in Napier (handily opposite our wool scour).

There are two different routes the wool can take - the majority of it is dyed in bulk (stock-dyed) before being made into yarn.  On occasion undyed yarn is made, and then 'hank-dyed'.

The dyeing technicians have thousands of colours to choose from and during the product development process it is common for a number of combinations to be tested before settling on the right shades and tones, especially where carpets have distinctive and contrasting colours.  Just a few shades too light or dark can upset the overall look of a carpet so it is an extremely skilled process.

A lot of carpets, even seemingly plain-looking ones, have more than one colour in them - most often two or three colours but it can be as much as six.

The yarn used for each colour in a carpet range follows a strict colour recipe to ensure the right proportion of colours is dyed in bulk and then blended together as a giant 'soup' before being spun into yarn.

At the point of dyeing, an insect resist treatment is also applied to ensure the carpet meets strict standards to deter against insect and moth infestation for a minimum of five years.

Blending is done by putting together the dyed colours in exactly the right ratio into an opening machine.  As the name suggests, it opens the fibre before mixing it together in a giant blending bin.

Once the wool has been dyed and blended, it is then 'carded' - basically stretched out and combed over rotating brush rollers.  They mix the dyed components together further.

At this point, the tangled web of coloured fibres is split up into individual strands which is then spun into yarn.   Yarns that are 2 or 3-ply have the ends twisted together and go through a further process where the yarn is washed and dried again.  Where the yarn is destined to be used in a cut-pile carpet, the twist is chemically set - pretty much the equivalent of getting a hair perm to hold the curl in.

The finished yarn is wound onto cones which holding around 4-5 kg of yarn each, and then sent to the tufting plant in Auckland to be made into carpet.