Knitwear brand seeks NZ hemp fibre
MANUFACTURING: There’s a gap in the market for a different sort of hemp — to help make sustainable clothing
Hemp plants grow amazingly in New Zealand and are really beneficial for our soils. — Siobhan O’Malley, Hemprino
AKiwi clothing brand spinning knitwear out of merino and hemp is hoping to drum up demand for a hemp fibre industry here. The new label, Hemprino, sells knitwear made from a single-blend of New Zealand merino and hemp.
Co-founder Siobhan O’Malley said locally grown hemp fibre for clothing wasn’t available in this country yet, but she was hoping that would change.
“The piece that’s missing in New Zealand at the moment is actually the processing, so taking the plant that’s grown and turning it into a usable fibre for apparel, or for packaging, or insulation, there’s a huge range of uses,” she said.
O’Malley said the company was working closely with agribusiness company Carrfields, which had partnered with Hemp NZ to research and develop the hemp fibre industry under a new company, New Zealand Natural Fibres.
“We’ve been in discussion with them the whole way through, ringing every six months asking if we’ve got apparel fibre from New Zealand yet,” she said.
“We’re just waiting, and we want to be their customer as soon as we can.”
O’Malley said the company used hemp fibre imported from China in its blend, but the merino was sourced locally and the products were manufactured in New Zealand.
She was hoping the company would fuel the demand for locally grown hemp fibre, which she said could grow in a variety of conditions and might be an alternative for farmers looking for different land uses.
“In New Zealand, we have been making big gains in terms of growing hemp for cosmetics, for food source, for oil, things like that,” she said.
“But our hemp plant that grows for fibre is a slightly different variety.
“Hemp plants grow amazingly in New Zealand and are really beneficial for our soils. As co-founders, we’re all farmers and we actually came at this thinking it would be an incredible plant to add diverse income to farms, but also to be beneficial to the soils in the land that we farm.”
The garments were also an alternative to fast fashion, O’Malley said, as they were biodegradable at the end of life.
“That’s one of the key drivers for us. There’s nothing worse than looking at those giant piles of garments in a landfill that are just never going to biodegrade, they’re never going anywhere,” she said.
“Lots of people don’t realise that in some merino products, that beautiful natural fibre is blended with an acrylic and as a result, it’s not biodegradable — it lives forever.
“That’s really what motivated us to try and look for alternatives to that and what led us to hemp fibre.
“I think people are starting to wake up to the idea that natural fibres are nicer to wear, they’re more pleasant next to your body, they last a long time. And also when they’re done, effectively you could put them in the compost heap and they would biodegrade and return to the soil.”