Wool work

After a few days in Jordan, I traveled to Italy with our Chief Supply Chain Officer yesterday. The 1am wake up call was brutal, but not as horrible as trying to sleep on our 4:30am flight from Jordan to Rome, then Rome to Verona.

Upon arriving at Verona yesterday, we were whisked away to a wool textile mill to discuss how we might be able to work better with a particular wool suiting fabric supplier. Our Chief Supply Chain Officer handled all the commercial details and I basically stuck around, taking notes and tried to stay awake. For me, the most interesting part was touring the factory and watching how thread is made into huge sheets of very beautiful suiting fabric.

I'd never been in a textile mill before and I was struck by how dusty everything was. There are huge, automated weaving machines that literally spit out beautiful yards of fabric. Pinstripes, plaids, a few weird swirly patterns. Very impressive stuff.

And today, we traveled three hours from Verona to Biella, where we went to a yarn spinning mill. Again, this was a process I'd never seen so I was pretty fascinated by all the machines, especially the dyeing machine that was fully computerized. It uses far less water and less dyestuff than a traditional dye house and requires only one person to place the hanks of wool onto the machine itself, thereby reducing the likelihood of people being poisoned by the toxic dyes.

I also got to see some very beautiful fabric that was knit from super, super fine merino wool that costs approximately $600 per kg and is limited to only a few hundred of kg per year. I guess I'm becoming a textile nerd.