The Product of Bremer Woll-Kämmerei: Top

The word "top" stems from the Old High with the additional aggregates ( Well-known quality names for fabrics German word "Zopf" meaning a tuft of machines, preparatory gilling and finisher made from woollen yarn are flannel, hair. In the wool industry it designates a drawing frames) in an 8-hour shift by loden, melton and tweed. continuous strand of the longer wool only six operatives. Combed wool, on the other hand, makes fibres after straightening and separating it possible to produce yarn of a different from the shorter fibres by . In So remember: character. As the short fibres have been pre-industrial days the wool actually was removed, the long, parallel fibres can be pulled through a comb by hand. The short Wool top is a clean, uniform of spun into a uniform, smooth and thus fibres and the tufts of wool known as parallel wool fibres which - freed of short high-quality yarn, namely yarn. "naps" were held back by the teeth of the fibres and fibre entanglements - goes as a Furthermore, worsted yarns can be spun comb as so-called "". The purpose of semi-product to be processed further in a much finer than woollen yarns since combing was in those days exactly the worsted mill. fewer fibres are required in the yarn same as today: to prepare the wool for the cross-section. Woven and knitted fabrics spinning of fine, uniform yarns known as Why is wool combed? made of worsted yarns are characterised worsted yarns. In those days, depending by clear, uniform surfaces. on the quality of the wool, a wool comber Well, to begin with wool does not always managed to produce between half a kilo- have to be combed. Yarn made from Textiles made of combed wool open up gramme and two kilogrammes of top in a uncombed wool is known as woollen the whole diversity of what the fashion 12-hour working day. yarn. As the short fibres have not been world can offer: from elegant to rustic, removed from the wool, woollen yarn has from formal to casual, from cosily warm One of today's high-performance combing innumerable fibre ends sticking out of it. for cold days to "cool" for spring and machines produces more than 30 kilo- In the woven fabric this makes for fluffy, summer. grammes per hour. Whole batteries of mossy or bristly surface. such machines are arranged into combing lines and operated and monitored together

The Production Process: Raw Wool Becomes Top

drawn off like a veil and for the first time Raw Wool Wool Scouring put into sliver form (carded sliver). BWK mainly processes the wool of the The wool is scoured, i. e. washed, in order merino sheep, which is especially fine, to remove perspiration salts, grease, sand, Preparatory Gilling features a strong crimp and is used for earth and dirt from the raw wool. Using The machine aggregates following card- high-quality outerwear. The wool comes soda and washing agents, these sub- ing, namely the gilling frames, have the predominantly from countries in the stances are gently washed out of the wool task of putting several carded slivers southern hemisphere: Australian, New while subjecting the wool to minimum together, mixing them and drawing them Zealand, South Africa and South Amer- mechanical stress. out. In this way the fibres are drawn ica. After being shipped to the ports of In a further process, wool wax is gained parallel to each other and the sliver is Hamburg and Bremerhaven, the wool is from the wool scouring water. This wax is rendered more uniform. delivered to BWK by rail or lorry. used for cosmetic and technical purposes. Preparation The scoured and dried wool is again Combing transported through pipes by blowers to Wool consists of fibres of different In the preparation area, the bales of raw the carding and combing systems. lengths. However, as only the long fibres wool are put together into lots. Bale are used to produce worsted yarn, the openers loosen up the compressed wool, Carding short fibres have to be removed from the which is then blown through pipes into wool. the wool scouring mill. The scoured wool still contains some vegetable matter such as burrs, plant This is done on the combing machines. seeds and grass. These are removed me- The carded slivers, which have now been chanically from the wool on the carding gilled several times, are carefully pulled machines. These machines consist of a apart and one end of the sliver is held in a complicated system of several large and nipper jaw. Then a circular comb runs small rollers covered with needles, some through the free tuft of fibres and combs rotating in the same direction while others out all the fibres that are not being held rotate against each other. These pick up by the nipper jaw. After this, the ends of the wool flocks and split them down to the tuft are again laid on top of each other the individual fibres. What then forms on and moved a few centimetres further the last roller is a fine wool web which is forward. This process is carried out sev- eral hundred times a minute. The result is

the wool top, which consists only of long Gilling and Finishing, Packing form bumps and tied up with string. On wool fibres lying parallel to each other. the packing press, 56 such bobbins and The gilling passages after the combing bumps are packed into a bale. The wool The combed-out short fibres are known as machines again mix and equalise the wool top is then ready for dispatch to the wor- "noil". This is used in woollen spinning tops. These are wound into sted spinning mills. and in the felt industry. 10-kilogramme bobbins or pressed to

Environmental Protection

Scouring wool needs a lot of water so that The scouring water is heated to turn it Also in future, we at BWK will resolutely large amounts of waste water are pro- into steam and separated into an energy- continue to advance the level of re- duced. This contains the substances rich concentrate. The steam condenses sources-thrifty environmental technology. washed out of the raw wool such as sand into water that can be re-used in the pro- In all fields. and earth, grease, perspiration salts, other duction process and which we use for In order not to jeopardise the good reputa- organic constituents and substances with wool scouring. The concentrate produced tion of wool as a natural product, all which the sheep have to be treated to by evaporation is incinerated at 1200°C; efforts are justified to make sure that, protect them from troublesome pests. this destroys all the organic constituents from its production via all processing and harmful substances. The energy Through high research and investment stages and through to the ultimate con- released is converted into steam and input and in collaboration with university sumer, we can in future continue to award electricity for the combing plant. institutions, with the engineering com- wool the best possible certificate for pany Lurgi and with the Federal Envi- Our waste water cleaning system there- environmental friendliness. ronmental Agency, we have managed to fore works with water recycling and solve the problem of cleaning the waste energy recovery. Furthermore, the amount water. The process consists of a combina- of sludge collected in our biological water When mentioning the source it is permit- tion of a biological water treatment plant treatment plant is reduced by 75% and ted to copy this information for educa- and an evaporation and incineration plant. fresh water is saved. The Federal Envi- tional and other non-commercial pur- ronmental Agency rated our process as poses. What is special about this process is the trend-setting for identical and similar way the wool scouring water is treated by © BWK AG problem cases and provided financial evaporation and incineration. assistance for the investment involved.

BREMER WOLL-KÄMMEREI AG · P.O. Box 71 01 80 · D-28761 Bremen · Germany Tel.: (+49) 04 21/60 91-0 · Fax: (+49) 04 21/60 91-600 · Telex: 2 44 482 bwkd e-mail: [email protected] · internet: http:// www.bwk-bremen.de