Brands and retailers are all turning their focus to sustainable fiber and circular economy. For example, by 2030, H&M pledge to be working with sustainable fabrics. For that reason, they have already dropped cashmere and 95% of their cotton is recycled or sustainable.
Jute is a sustainable natural fiber and Bangladesh produces the best jute in the world. But the kind of products that are made with jute are not focused to serve the need for high-end fashion items. The problem of jute fiber is its fiber staple length (1.0-1.50 meter) and higher micronaire (7+). With the conventional jute spinning system, finest count that can be made is Ne 5/s that is very coarse.
Since 2016, I have been working with jute fiber and came out with quality ‘Jute Staple Fiber’ that can be blended to make medium count yarn with the conventional ring and rotor dry spinning process. However, Jute Research Institute has produced ‘Juton’ that is a jute blended cotton yarn. But the quality is not good and with their process, it is not possible to make Ne 16+ yarn to the best of my knowledge.
The development that I call as ‘Jute Staple Fiber’ is a very high-quality fiber. For experimentation, I have made blended yarn blending it with other fiber; cotton and PSF, in different proportions. At first, I made trail yarn through sample spinning machine to find out what is the maximum percentage of ‘Jute Staple Fiber’ that can be used to produce yarn. It was found that ‘Jute Staple Fiber’ could be used from 10% to a maximum of 50% with cotton.
Then I have used it in bulk dry ring spinning process to produce Ne 30/s knit yarn with 20% ‘Jute Staple Fiber’ and 80% PSF. The yarn quality was very good. It was dyed and the fabric quality is also good. Of course, jute fiber requires a separate softening process that was not done but it is possible to remove harshness with proper treatment that is already proven.
In order to see how it performs in the rotor spinning process and to see how much finer yarn count can we produce in dry ring spinning process, we did another bulk trial. We used 20% ‘Jute Staple Fiber’ and 80% cotton as raw material and made yarn in rotor and ring spinning process. The in-ring process, we produced Ne 38/s weaving. The yarn quality was okay but CSP was low 1700. Actually, since the micronaire of jute fiber is high, in my opinion up to Ne 30/s we can expect good quality and CSP for both knit and woven yarn. Of course, it is a fashion item with effects similar to linen blends. In the rotor spinning process, we produced Ne 10/s and Ne 18/s. The yarn quality of both counts was very good with 2400 CSP.
In my opinion:
- In rotor dry spinning process, it would be possible to go for even up to 50/50 blend ‘Jute Staple Fiber’ to produce Ne 6/s to Ne 20/s and we can get high-quality yarn with very good CSP that can be used in producing high-end fashion denim, home textile and suiting and knitting. The in-ring dry spinning process, it would be possible to go for even up to 50/50 blend ‘Jute Staple Fiber’ to produce Ne 6/s to Ne 20/s yarn and we can get high-quality yarn with very good CSP that can be used in producing high-end fashion denim, home textile and suiting.
- In-ring dry spinning process, it would be possible to blend 5% to 20% of ‘Jute Staple Fiber’ to produce Jute blended quality yarn of Ne 20/s to Ne 30/s yarn and we can get high-quality yarn with good CSP that can be used in producing high-end fashion denim, home textile and suiting, shirting and knit garments.
I hope ‘Jute Staple Fiber’ to be used to produce jute blended yarn to produce high-quality fashion items in the future.
