Jute is a vegetable bast fibre plant (fibre is collected from bast or skin of the plant and spun into a coarse, strong thread, linseed and hemp are two others.) It’s very adaptable and can grow it where it’s salty, sandy or full of clay, likes high temperature and humidity and particularly thrives in India and Bangladesh. The first recorded history of the use of jute as a textile fibre was in the 1500s.

The plants grow up to 12 feet in height and are harvested and processed by hand, in India and Bangladesh 5 million jobs are linked to the Jute trade. Jute is also known as Hessian or Burlap and has numerous advantages over other materials, primarily it’s adaptability, resilience and bio-degrading qualities and the non-polluting processing methods that are required to produce the fabric.

In a nutshell, Jute is harvested 3-4 months after planting, once the flowers have been shed, and after this the Jute is ‘retted’. The traditional and most common method of retting is what is known as ‘stem retting’, in which the complete plant stem is immersed in water for up to a month, in bundles of multiple layers (termed ‘rets’).

The fibres are then separated from the stems and once the fibre is washed, dried, sorted, graded and baled, it is transported to the mills. There, the fibres are softened with selected oils, water and emulsifiers, graded for the correct quality and finally spun into a fabric. The whole process is labour intensive but non polluting and does not consume vast amounts of fossil fuels.