Love Local

For decades, sheep farming in Europe has been focused on meat and milk production rather than wool production. The wool used for fashion has long been sourced from Asia and Australia. It is often from merino sheep, whose wool is famously very soft. However, those sheep are often kept on plastic to ensure that the wool is spotless and clean. The wool is then shipped all the way to Europe for fashion production and transported up to Sweden into the shops in your town. 

Sheep kept here in Sweden do not have wool as soft as merino sheep. The wool often contains small pieces of hay and herbs, since Swedish sheep are kept outside and on hay.

Swedish farmers therefore have wool that is considered as “low quality” because the wool market is so heavily influenced by merino wool from Asia and Australia. So, Swedish farmers struggle to sell their wool. Often, they are left with no other option than disposing or burning the wool that their sheep, technically, grow for free.

Swedish wool is therefore a highly unused resource, instead of being the valuable product that it is. Koldbath Craft Kollektive is part of the movement of passionate Swedish farmers, sheep shearers and knitters that want to establish the infrastructure for local wool sourcing again. 

Buy local, if you want to be part of a sustainable fashion and textile industry!