Birkby, West Yorkshire, United Kingdom
Trio of northern businesses collaborate to make sustainable knitwear from cutting waste
The UK’s leading textile recycling specialist, iinouiio, part of the Camira Group, has partnered with award-winning apparel brand, Superlove Merino, and knitwear designer and manufacturer, OUBAS, to create a recycled merino wool yarn made from cutting waste that would otherwise be destined for landfill.
The premium-quality recycled merino wool yarn, ReMerino is produced using offcuts generated from the garment manufacturing process at Superlove Merino’s solar-powered factory in the Lake District. Using iinouiio’s state-of-the-art textile recycling technology, based at Camira Yarns in Birkby, West Yorkshire, the first development of recycled ReMerino yarn was developed in summer 2024, and will be used to create a limited run of luxury women’s knitwear in collaboration with Kate Stalker of OUBAS, an award-winning knitwear designer and manufacturer based in Ulverston, Cumbria.
Founder of iinouiio, Dr. John Parkinson, commented: “Some people call discarded or unwanted textiles ‘waste’, but to us it’s just a raw material – too often limited only by imagination and skill. We’re incredibly proud to have been able to support two fantastic like-minded northern businesses, who share a passion for textiles and sustainability, to transform their cutting room floor waste into beautiful luxury merino wool knitwear.”
The exclusive collection of women’s knitwear is available to buy at superlovemerino.com.
Director of Superlove Merino, Becky Sayer added: “We are thrilled to see this transformation of our cutting room waste into such beautifully crafted pieces. We are known for our timeless, wearable designs, so we wanted this recycled knitwear to align with that too. We hope, on seeing what even small indie brands can do with innovative collaborations like this, others will be inspired to tackle the serious waste issues associated with the textiles industry.”
Founded in 2019 by Dr John Parkinson and his wife, Linda, whose family heritage lies in the ‘shoddy and mungo’ textile recycling mills that thrived in West Yorkshire throughout the 19th and early 20th centuries, iinouiio is the UK’s leading wool recycler with unique knowledge in mechanical recycling methods. In 2022 IINOUIIO became part of the Camira Textiles group and now offers a service to fashion brands and textile manufacturers to help them convert what would ordinarily be deemed ‘unusable materials’ or waste, into beautiful new yarns and fabrics for re-use.
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