FIBRE QUALITY
Not all wool is created equal.
New Zealand Merino wool is a cut above the rest.
While some wool can look like this...
Poor health and stress experienced by sheep are transferred into the fibre they produce. It creates uneven fibre diameter and ‘weak points’ which leads to poor quality and poor product performance. Not to mention the suffering that the sheep will have been under during this time.
... ZQ wool looks like this
ZQ Natural Fibre tends to be more uniform in diameter, and wool with weak points simply does not meet the ZQ grade. This means that ZQ only provides consistent, high quality, high performing fibre year on year, season after season. Simple as that.
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These natural advantages are passed onto you in the form of products that keep you extremely comfortable while allowing you to perform at the highest standard for longer.
PASSIONATE PEOPLE + HEALTHY ANIMALS
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HIGH QUALITY ZQ FIBRE
The secret sauce behind ZQ Natural Fibre are the people and animals that create it. Our growers comply with the ZQ Grower Standard, where standards are upheld with pride. The standards demand the best from our growers in animal welfare (think healthy, well-fed sheep!), and environmental practice, resulting in strong, white, long staple fibre that’s fit for the market it’s grown for.
Handpicked
Each fleece is hand selected. Every single one. A highly skilled ‘classer’ of wool inspects the fibre’s quality and assesses whether it meets each contract specification, or not.
That way you know you’re only getting the wool quality you ask for, and no floor sweepings.
The wool is collected by shearing a sheep - It’s like a number four haircut, but for sheep! This is usually carried out once a year, in early springtime, to ensure they still have their woolly coats for the cold winter months. Shearers are highly skilled and pride themselves on careful handling of the sheep.
After hundreds of years of breeding and producing wool, shearing sheep is also about keeping the animals comfortable, relieving them from having to endure the hot summer months with a heavy fleece.
Luxuriously soft
Scratchy, prickly wool your grandma used to knit wasn’t ZQ Natural Fibre.
There are different types of thicknesses for wool, measured in ‘microns’. Merino wool is very fine and soft, starting at around 10-12 micron and getting up to 24 micron. More coarse microns such as 27 and above, are normally reserved for home textiles and carpets.
To put things into perspective, a human hair is around 60 micron.
Nature’s super fibre
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ZQ Natural Fibre is naturally technical; it moves moisture away from the skin, adapts to warm or cool you according to the conditions, protects you from the sun, is flame resistant, and resists the build-up of odour.
Oh, and it’s super soft.
