THE NATURAL PARADISE OF TASMANIA

THE ORIGINS OF OUR WOOL

The sheep in Tasmania have a unique habitat to call home. The pristine island 240km south of Australia offers excellent air quality and is one thing above all: green. With an area around the size of Bavaria, the Australian federal state provides a home for around 500,000 people – as well as 3 million merino sheep.

Our wool has its origins at the heart of this natural paradise. The air is pure, the food for animals rich, and the climate moderate – this is where extraordinarily fine and high quality merino wool is found.  Surrounded by thousands of kilometers of water, far away from industrial sites, the best air quality on earth is regularly measured in Tasmania. 19 national parks provide a protective habitat for everything that grows, lives and flourishes on the island – including 1,500 endemic plant species.

FOUR MILLION YEARS OF DEVELOPMENT

We take advantage of the optimal conditions in Tasmania, which allow us to utilize the high quality, fine merino wool: The natural conditions there provide an ideal habitat for sheep and their wool. Because over many millions of years, nature has achieved what humans have been trying for only a few hundred years: creating a perfect fiber. Tasmanian merino wool is of a particularly high quality because all the conditions are just right here. The animals have enough fresh grass, plenty of space to roam, and are cared for gently.

IMPERCEPTIBLE

Wool quality is generally measured using the fibers. The finer the fibers, the higher the quality and the price – and the less itchy the wool. The thickness of the merino wool fibers is measured using “microns”, where a micron represents a thousandth of a meter (=0.001mm):

  • Ultrafine: Less than 16.5 microns
  • Superfine: 17 to 18.9 microns
  • Fine: 19 to 21.9 microns
  • Medium: 22 to 23 microns
  • Strong: 24 to 25 microns

The only wool finer than merino wool comes from Angora rabbits, with fibers with a strength of 12 to 16 microns. Comparable wool varieties with a greater fiber thickness are cashmere, camel, alpaca and yak wool.

THE EVOLUTION OF WOOL

It is normally white, but can also be black or brown. When it’s warm, wool has a cooling effect; when it’s cold, wool is warming. When we talk about wool, we mean the white hair of the coat (not the guard hair) found above all on sheep. Wool grows and grows and grows and is therefore a 100% sustainable raw material that was first used in the fourth century BC. Synthetic fibers and cottons are some of the most important “competitors” for wool, which has nevertheless maintained its economic strength to this day.

WHAT IS WOOL?

In earlier years the wool used for (mountain) sports was warm, but was above all also itchy, dried slowly if it got wet, and was also not particularly sexy. This wool was “normal” wool from other sheep breeds, however, and not from merinos. Normal wool is around twice as thick as the merino wool provided by our four-legged friends in Tasmania.

Nowadays, and of course also at ORTOVOX, the very fine wool fibers from merino sheep are used, particularly for underwear and products that come into direct contact with the skin.