Inside Woollen Spinners (Huddersfield) Ltd

The ideal business relationship is working with a reliable partner company, with unparalleled expertise, that is local and can deliver exceptional quality, consistently at a fair price when you demand it. It’s a big ask, but in Woollen Spinners (Huddersfield) Ltd, just 20 minutes east on the M62, we have everything we need.

Like Newhey, Woollen Spinners is a proud family owned and run Northern company with over half a decade of traditional, and now modern, manufacturing experience. Both strong supporters of ‘Made in Britain’, we share a common love for doing amazing things with high quality wool and wool mixtures.

The company was formed back in 1960 by Roger Wood and is now run by his son, Mark. They started as a commission spinner and then gradually developed own sale yarns, all wool first, then 80/20 which we use for the majority of our commercial hospitality carpets. Recently, they reintroduced pure natural undyed wool yarns to their portfolio, which we use for our Natural Wool and Natural Earth Collections.

Mark Wood, owner of Woollen Spinners explains “We work closely with Newhey carpets to select the best wool types using a good proportion of British wools to produce a dyed yarn to ensure an end carpet that gives a top quality for appearance, comfort and durability. We are also carefully selecting some British Mountain wools supplemented with other Northern European wools making use of their natural colours to produce a yarn which can go straight into a carpet without the need for colour dyeing. As we are a local supplier to Newhey, we are able to respond quickly to work to customer delivery requirements.”

On our regular visits to Woollen Spinners, we are always impressed by the technological advancements and enhancements Mark and his team make in order to continually improve the quality of their yarns and also the efficiency of their production. The process itself is fascinating, though it remains reassuringly traditional.

Click the link below to watch a short video that gives you a rare glimpse into the magic that Mark and his team spin every working day.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CU9vKy25rws

Let’s first rewind to the flock. Shearing is usually done in Spring shortly before lambing. Wool merchants remove anything that has attached to the wool in a process called ‘skirting’. The fleece is washed and then sorted into various types of wool from fine to coarse and short from long. It is then graded by touch according to fineness, length and colour.

It’s at this point where Mark and his team at Woollen Spinners take over.–

The wool is blended by combining wool fibres together of different origins, thicknesses, lengths and colour to create a blend which is then ready to be carded.

Carding disentangles any clumps, cleans and intermixes the fibres, then aligns them parallel to each other to create a continuous web or sliver for processing and creates ‘rovings’ which are long narrow bundles of fibres needed for spinning.

Next, ring spinning stretches the yarn and then gives it a twist to add strength. These single threads are then twisted together to create 2 or 3 ply yarns which we then use to make our wool-rich carpets.

Lees Whitehead, Newhey Joint Managing Director clearly enjoys working with Woollen Spinners “We’ve had a very close working relationship with Mark and Woollen Spinners for many years now. The expertise, yarns, value for money and service they deliver are all exceptional. We insist on the very best quality yarns as they not only create a more durable finished carpet, they are also easier to work with, with fewer yarn breaks and losses of production time. Mark never fails to deliver.”