RWS tops a best seller

Eric Durand with RWS certified tops

The Covid-19 pandemic has seen a major disruption to the wool industry from wool grower to retailer. It is very difficult to predict how the industry will re-emerge from this crisis, but the issues of quality, traceability and certification will still be important factors for buyers of wool products’, says Eric Durand CEO Lempriere Wool. ‘Prior to covid we saw a demand for Responsible Wool Standards (RWS) certified wool tops increase steadily. 20% of our production is now allocated to RWS certified tops’, he remarks. ‘If the level of demand recovers to pre-Covid-19 levels quickly we can see a shortage of specific wool types’. Lempriere Wool sources RWS wool from certified Australian growers. ‘There are still a limited number of certified farms in Australia and so far we can meet the demand’, he says, ‘but as this demand increases there could be a shortage of RWS certified wool. We hope that as growers receive a premium for this certification more growers of merino wool, not just in Australia, but around the wool, will become RWS Accredited’.

As an independent and widely accepted certification RWS is preferred by many and European spinners in particular. Lempriere Bulgaria can also provide GOTS and EU Flower and is fully accredited with Interwoollabs. It has a production capacity of 6 million kg tops per year.

‘80% of our production is for Lempriere Group and 20% is on commission basis’, comments Eric Durand. ‘New, recently installed nsc combs that are more efficient have been a boon to our operation. Proximity to port and excellent road connections to all European countries and close to fashion brands enable us to provide quick deliver time within Europe.

Lempriere opened its topmaking plant in Sliven, Bulgaria in 2016 and today it is a well established supplier wool tops to major brands worldwide. Operations are mainly focused on processing 17.5 - 25 micron wool from around the world but mostly from Australia, South Africa and South America.

‘Of course we can be in completely new territory post Covid-19. The market has been happy to accept USD12 for 19.5 micron and USD11.5 for 21 micron and if wool prices stay within this range we feel that the demand for wool in this micron range will continue to be strong and fashion brands will continue to use it in their luxury apparel’, Eric Durand comments. ‘Wool cannot be easily replaced by synthetics or other fibres and high end consumers appreciate this fact’.

Eric Durand can be contacted at Eric.Durand@lempriere.bg

Mark Brims of BSC Electronics

OFDA celebrates 30th anniversary

2021 represents 30 years since the first OFDA100 image analyser for measuring wool diameter was sold. Since that time the OFDA has given rise to the world’s premier family of fibre diameter measurement instruments, and is the most widespread way of measuring the diameter of wool cashmere and alpaca.

The new OFDA2000 is now smaller and more portable, about 1/3 the volume of the original portable and benchtop models, and still providing the same good performance.

It is hard to remember the time when 200 fibres per hour were measured manually on a projection microscope. Now OFDA automatically measures up to 10,000 fibres in 30 seconds. Some scientists even thought it would be impossible to make an accurate image analysis system since the required 0.1um accuracy is much smaller than the wavelength of light used to capture the image (0.6um). The OFDA2000 was released in 2000 and is the only instrument that measures the fibre diameter along the staple. Diameter can vary up to 50% along a staple and in extreme cases an animal can be producing 20um fibre at one time of the year, and 30um at another time, usually due to the diet. It comes in a portable version which allows use in a shearing shed in the outback, or in a vehicle in Mongolia or on farm in the Peruvian Andes.

The OFDA4000 was released in 2004 and measures the main wool top parameters of diameter, length and hauteur in a single measurement. It is the only instrument that measures length and short fibre content directly, the older measurement of hauteur is only accurate if there is no diameter variation along the fibre or between long and short fibres, which is very rare in animal fibres. OFDA technology was incorporated into OFDA MFX, the only image-based instrument to measure hundreds of monofilaments online as they are extruded. It is mounted directly

OFDA 2000 mini portable

with new 2000 mini portable model

onto the extrusion line and can provide over 1 million diameter measurements per second.

CSIRO work combined with OFDA technology produced the Cottonscope, which measures cotton fibre snippets in a water bowl. It is the only instrument to automatically measure cotton fibre maturity (wall thickness) and fineness directly, and has been used to improve cotton varieties worldwide.

Research was done into detection of airborne asbestos fibres, and whilst this is not yet successful it led to the surprising discovery of quantum magnification and this, combined with the Cottonscope technology, led to the Diamscope instrument. This is the only optical image analysis instrument capable of measuring fibres with diameters as low as 0.2um. It is a revolution for manufacturing quality control and used by ultrafine ceramic and fibreglass manufacturers including companies such as Unifrax and SpaceX.

The OFDA technology was also incorporated in the SIFAN (SIngle Fibre Analyser) instrument which has recently been upgraded to provide the highest resolution single fibre diameter and cross section instrument and the first instrument to measure birefringence (caused by the alignment of interior cells) automatically along a whole fibre. SIFAN has recently discovered faint but definite birefringence patterns in wool fibre and human hair, the significance of which is not yet known but will open a new field of research. ‘With well over 500 instruments sold, the OFDA story has been a journey of innovation and we would like to thank everyone who has supported us or bought our instruments. There are far too many too thank individually, but Marco Schneider from the Giovanni Schneider group deserves special thanks for believing in us and buying the first OFDA100 at ITMA in Hanover in 1991. None of us would realise how successful it would become’, remarks Mark Brims of BSC Electronics, distributor of OFDA testing technology.