26th February 2009

Wool will never be wasted again thanks to new venture

By Lisa Bright

ONE Blackdowns farmer has come up with an ingenious and unique way to use wool to not only keep a sheep warm, but keep it cool too.

Using poorer quality wool and waste fibres, small holder Val “Woolly Shepherd” Grainger, has come up with a way to create environmentally friendly insulation for the meatpacking industry, doing away with polystyrene.

Val was born in surrey and grew up in the West Country. After leaving school she married and became a housewife raising her children along with goats, pigs and sheep on their smallholding in Dorset.

Over the years she gained a wealth of knowledge in looking after livestock. She kept award-winning goats and became well rooted in the livestock industry.

After many years keeping sheep and goats, Val found that selling wool was not a profitable as it could be.

Fed up that she received very little for her bog standard wool, Val decided it was time to find another use for it.

She got together with friend Tracey Bell from the Old Kennels and the decided to set up a group for fellow fibre producers to promote West Country natural fibres.

The Blackdown Hills Natural Fibre group formed in 2005.

Val said: “There are a lot of businesses involved including me with the Woolly Shepherd, John Arbon textiles, Corrymoor Socks, Ashill Alpacas and various other people. They are all users or producers of fibres.”

The group’s main purpose is to promote local fibres and offer consumers with “low fibre mile” textiles and products.

After securing funding from various sources, the BHNF group have been able to carry out several successful projects including helping to turn Coldharbour Mill, Uffculme, from a museum in to a working mill and organising a bi-annual fibre festival in the Blackdown Hills.

As well as producing locally grown knitting wool, which is either naturally coloured or dyed using non-chemical dyes, Val has moved into recycling wool with her latest project, Woolly Waste.

Woolly Waste sources waste wool from the weaving and spinning industry as well as fibres not suitable for clothing.

“Woolly Waste deals with the not so fine fibres such as the Blue Face Leicester and the Dorset Down, unlike mohair and alpaca wool, which people want to wear,” said Val.

“The ordinary farmer hasn’t got a market for their wool. Quite often they get less return for what it costs to shear the sheep. The average cost per kilo of wool is 54 pence, which is the same as in 1954. And on average it costs £1 to shear a sheep.”

“What we are doing is moving into creating wool insulation.”

Val has been given funding from the Leader + programme which she has used to purchase equipment to create felt.

She has also gained funding from Devon Renaissance to let a unit at the Eco Business Park in Dunkeswell.

The equipment means that Val is able to wash, blend, card and felt large quantities of wool. This also gives other textile producers in the Blackdowns the opportunity to process their wool, limiting their fibre miles.

Val’s latest venture sees her using her waste wool felt for a unique purpose, as protective packaging and insulation.

Val explained: “We realised we could make insulation used in meatpacking.

“The wool is in perforated plastic bags and goes into flat pack cardboard boxes. It can be used for meat sold direct and the customer can either send the packaging back to us to be reused or they can recycle it themselves at home. The idea is to replace polystyrene, which can’t be recycled.

“It also can be expanded for farmer’s markets whose products can be packed in a plywood box. It works on the same principal

“The farmer is able to pack their lamb in its wool, making the most of the sheep.

“We are about to sign a deal with an organic box company based in the south west

“We are the only company producing our own packaging. There are other companies doing it but they use wool from all over the country and send it to Germany to be processed, which increases fibre miles. Ours is 100 per cent West Country wool which we process here, keeping our fibre miles low and it is produced in an environmentally friendly environment.”

This form of insulated packaging is environmentally friendly and is more efficient at keeping things cool than polystyrene.

Val is also looking at developing Woolly Cookers, working on the same principal but would include heat reflective coating on the plastic to keep things hot.

Things have taken off so quickly for Val that she has outgrown her business premises.

She will soon be moving to a bigger unit complete with solar panels. She also plans to use biomass energy to heat the water for washing the wool and using waste heat energy to dry the wool.

Once settled into her new unit, Val will offer contract washing and training on the machinery giving other textile producers and fibre users the opportunity to make felt.

“We have had an amazing response,” said Val. “A lot of people can’t get their heads round it. We have raised the profile of what can be done with waste fibre.

“All the wool we use is from the West Country. We go direct to the farmers through the British Wool Board. We have also got some big quantities from Buckfast Spinning Mill and we are also working with the culm valley weavers at Cold Harbour Mill.

“It will inevitably mean that our wool is going to cost a little more. We could have gone to either China or Germany to do this. But we want to keep local people in business by providing local jobs and keep sheep farmers farming.

“The West Country was built around the wool industry and it will be nice to bring it back.

“There are very few people doing what we are doing. It is really exciting but a bit scary too. But it’s working.

“I think people are beginning to look at clothing ethically. For a while now people have been considering their food miles and we are trying to get people thinking about their fibre miles. This is the calm before the storm.”

Wool will never be wasted again thanks to new venture

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