Have you ever wondered how that freshly shorn pile of merino wool becomes your next functional shirt?

It is a long process that requires a lot of expertise and experience to ultimately transform this natural fiber into incomparably comfortable and highly functional sportswear. Here is a brief insight into the most important manufacturing steps:

1. Sheep farming and shearing

The Merino sheep is the breed of sheep with the finest wool quality (from around 14-16 microns) . The best wool qualities come from sheep farms in mountainous regions with large temperature differences between summer and winter. Our suppliers therefore source their Merino wool mainly from New Zealand, Tasmania and the South American Andean regions.

Merino sheep were not only bred for their particularly soft wool, but also for their ability to grow fur quickly and abundantly. That is why it is particularly important to shear the "Merinos" regularly. The shearing process does not cause the animals any pain, quite the opposite - not shearing them would be cruelty to animals, as the animals would otherwise die after years from the weight of their own wool.

Of course, all of the manufacturers listed on our website only process wool that is certified for animal welfare and does not involve mulesing. Animal welfare is also the basis for high-quality wool.

2. Sorting the wool

For Merino underwear, usually only the wool from the lower belly of the sheep is used, as this has a particularly fine fiber structure (the fillet piece, so to speak).
This is also the reason why the raw material price for this fine wool is relatively high.
The remaining wool is used for other purposes where the fineness of the wool is not so important (e.g. blankets, knitting wool, etc.).
In the first processing step, the wool is sorted before it goes on to be washed.

3. Cleaning the raw wool

The raw wool contains up to 40% of the total weight of dirt particles and wool grease.
The wool is washed in several steps and freed from dust, sand and plant residues using mechanical processes.
It is important that a certain amount of the natural wool fat (lanolin) is retained so that the wool does not dry out and become brittle. Lanolin also has a positive effect on human skin. The excess wool fat from the washing process is filtered out and then used in cosmetic moisturizers, for example. The wool fat also plays an important role in the ability of the wool fibers to temporarily store large amounts of moisture (up to 30% of the wool's own weight). The washed wool is then combed and dried in several steps.

4. The refinement of wool into a yarn

Before the cleaned raw wool can be processed into underwear, it must be further processed and spun into yarn.
To obtain a uniform yarn quality, the wool fibers are combed until tangles are removed and the fibers are parallel to each other. This process, known as "carding," also allows broken or too short fibers to be sorted out. Due to the uniform alignment, there are far fewer fiber ends that can irritate the skin.
Through this complex finishing process, the wool fibers can be spun into a smoother, finer and, above all, softer yarn.
These processing steps, which require appropriate know-how and modern machine technology, contribute significantly to the quality of the raw wool and to the comfortable feel and durability of the final product.

The combed wool fibers are first gathered into wool ribbons and then loosely twisted and pulled into a roving. They can then be spun into the finished yarn.

In addition to the classic spinning process, there are also new techniques, such as core spinning, in which wool fibers are twisted around an existing filament (e.g. nylon / elastane) to achieve greater stability or stretchability of thin fabrics. The finished yarn is then steamed to prevent curling and can then be subjected to the multi-stage dyeing process.

Many of our manufacturers already use skin-friendly and less chemically-stressed dyeing:

• OEKO-TEX® Standard 100: Aclima , Devold , Engel , Woolpower
• bluesign® System Partners: Ortovox , Kari Traa , Mons Royale
• Plant-based dye (Nature Dye): Icebreaker

5. Fabric production

The finished yarn is wound onto large spools and can be transported to the knitting factory, where it is further processed into fabric.
Some of our suppliers still operate their own knitting factories, e.g.:

• Woolpower (in Sweden)
• Aclima (in Estonia)
• Devold (in Lithuania)
• Dale of Norway (in Norway)
• angels (in Germany)

and can thus minimize transport routes, as well as individually optimize the manufacturing process and implement specially developed knitting techniques.

A variety of knitting techniques are used to produce the fabrics, e.g.:

• Mixture of different colored yarns for patterned fabrics
• Mixture of merino yarns with other fibers
• Seamless circular knitting process (usually in combination with synthetic fibers)
• terry knit (loop-like structure inside)
• structural fabrics (wave structure, waffle structure, deep pile structure)
• mesh structure

In addition, there are different fabric thickness settings, which are measured in grams per m² of fabric weight . For functional reasons, garments are often put together from different pieces of fabric with different structures or thicknesses in order to provide more stretch or more breathability in the corresponding areas of the body, for example.

7. Packaging

Using appropriate templates, the corresponding pieces are now cut out of the fabric strips.

Here, care is taken to produce as little waste as possible. Some manufacturers even use the leftover fabric to create their own “resorted” products (e.g. Woolpower, Aclima). Separate patterns are required for the various product series and the different clothing sizes.

Now all that's left is to sew the different pieces of fabric together to create the finished garment. Merino underwear is usually made with flat seams to prevent friction. For Merino T-shirts, the classic seam with a seam overhang on the inside is usually chosen for aesthetic reasons, as this seam is less visible from the outside than the flat seam.

For shirts or long-sleeved shirts with prints, there is another processing step. Designs are usually applied to merino fabrics using a screen printing process, but rarely also using digital printing.
In the screen printing process, the paint is wiped from one side to the other using a motif stencil within a frame.

After completing these steps, the finished Merino clothing can be packaged and sent to the manufacturers’ warehouses,
Some of our manufacturers already use sustainable solutions for packaging, such as recycled cardboard (e.g. Ortovox , Icebreaker ) or film packaging made from plant-based plastic (e.g. Mons Royale , Super.Natural ).
However, we believe there is still room for improvement here. We therefore continually use our influence on manufacturers to convince them to use plastic-free solutions for product packaging.

7. Conclusion

The reason why we want to show the whole process from the sheep to the finished functional shirt is to raise awareness of how complex this entire production process is and how many individual work steps are necessary to end up with a high-quality and comfortable end product in which animal welfare has not been neglected.
With this in mind, it is hopefully now clear that a piece of clothing made from this precious raw material is worth its price.


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