Reshaping Wool in the Australian Fashion Industry

Meriel Chamberlin, Full Circle Fibres owner and founder, explains that about 3-5% of a Merino fleece consists of shorter fibres known as 'locks'.

“These shorter fibres are perceived as having a lower value than the rest of the fleece and tend to be used in homewares or for chunkier knit garments as it is difficult to process them into fine yarn. In our project, we sourced locks from South Australia and blended the fibres with cotton from Queensland. The wool cotton blend yarn we've created is finer than yarn normally made with locks.”

Currently, the majority of raw Australian wool processing and the textile production that follows it is done overseas, as there is limited on-shore capacity. Meriel says the $147,000 received from the Country Road Climate Fund was essential in providing the necessary resources to organise and run trial fibre dyeing, spinning, and fabric milling. These innovative trials were carried out at various locations including Deakin's Future Fibres Facility, a facility Meriel describes as unique for being able to take a concept from “lab to label” under the one roof.

Deakin's Future Fibres Facility is one of the only facilities in Australia that has the capability to process and spin short staple fibres, like the wool 'locks' used in this project. In particular, its ability to conduct research right through to industrial-scale proof of concept is globally rare.

An ambitious project, Mud to Marle involved more than testing the strength and hand feel of the wool cotton blend yarn. Meriel also wanted to pilot creating a marle yarn in which only the wool fibres were dyed, with the cotton left undyed.

“We wanted to reduce water usage and energy consumption while still creating a viable textile product,” she explains. “Dye takes to wool very readily compared with cotton. To fix the dye to wool, only one to two rinse baths are required, whereas cotton requires up to six. So there are big water and energy savings if only dyeing a certain percentage of the fibres in the yarn.”

Meriel says the wool-only dyeing produced impressive depth of colour in the sample range.

“Blending coloured fibre for both visual effect and technical property testing was a unique experience for the team. The project successfully developed small samples for a 14-colour palette, but when scaled up, some variation occurred, highlighting pilot scale challenges in batch consistency. Achieving consistent yarn strength and fabric weight also requires further refining.”

The project generated many learnings for the team and the industry at large. Meriel says apart from the need for further trials, a barrier to scaling production is that one of the only on-shore spinning facilities is the one at Deakin Institute for Frontier Materials, where the Future Fibres Facility is based. While the institute currently operates in a research capacity and is not set up for commercial use, the project offers learning for the industry, providing a positive step towards the return of large-scale spinning in Australia. The project has also unlocked an additional $300,000 for a three-year industry partnership to continue Deakin's research into wool cotton product.

Having produced knit and woven garment samples such as T-Shirts, jumpers, pants and skirts, Meriel is optimistic about taking the learnings from the project further and contributing to Australia's history of wool research and development.

The Mud to Marle project has successfully demonstrated the future potential for an end-to-end, low-impact textile production process in Australia. The next challenge lies in scaling these innovations and ensuring consistent batch quality for commercial application.