Britspun: It’s All In The Label

Consumers can soon spot products made from English Fine Cottons yarn by checking for our new Britspun label.

We’ve developed the tag to help designers and retailers show their customers they’re buying a British-made product.

English Fine Cottons’ Tracy Hawkins said: “For a range of reasons, the public is keener than ever to buy British-made products. As a result, businesses want to show they are listening to what people want.

“Since we went into production in 2016, we’ve supplied yarn to an impressive list of clients, including some household names. A number of products are in development and in due course they will reach retail outlets and be available for the public to buy.

“Some of our customers intend to use the English Fine Cottons label on their products.  But the Britspun tag is another option available to those who can validate their own supply chain.”

A quality assurance tag

Tracy added: “Consumers who spot either label can be assured that not only has the product been manufactured in the UK, it’s made from a high quality yarn.”

Provenance is enshrined in our company values here at English Fine Cottons. And that’s why we are keen to encourage our customers to continue the provenance trail.

In recent years, reports of misrepresentation have forced retailers to examine their suppliers’ cotton certification records and validate their products.

The provenance trail

We make sure we know all about our raw materials, so we buy our cotton directly from growers rather than cotton agents.

For example, our Supima cotton comes straight from the one of the world’s most reputable farms, JG Boswell in California.  Recently, we visited the farm to learn all about their processes.

Every bale of raw cotton we receive from Boswell’s comes with its own unique number. This allow us to trace the bale back to the day and the section of field it was harvested. All this guarantees real consistency in our cotton’s main characteristics, colour and length.

Complete traceability

In fact, we devised all our handling processes at Tower Mill with traceability in mind. We keep track of every delivery to the warehouse, logging the containers and bale numbers.

Every time we load the bale plucker – the first machine to process the cotton fibres – we use bales from the same master batch.

The cotton is tracked as it travels through the mill and then every cone of finished yarn has its own unique number. This provides complete traceability all the way back to the grower.