We want to know the full story of our shirts. For the majority of our shirts we can trace back their journeys to the raw material. We are not 100% there as it is often difficult to trace back the origin of the raw materials such as cotton or linen. We are working on this to provide you with full traceability.
Shirt Manufacturing
We are working with several manufacturing partners in Portugal. One of them is Marfel in Portugal. The Felgueiras based, family-run company was founded in 1946 and is specialized in the fabrication of shirts. Some of our shirts are made at Marfel. The approximately 250 employees, cut, measure and trim our shirts under the highest quality standards.
Since 2020 we work with two new partners in Portugal: Soci4 and Confeccoes TM. Soci4 is a shirt manufacturer in Frazao near Porto. The company employs around 100 employees. As it is with many of our suppliers, most of these employees are women (more than 90). Soci4 is our partner for high-quality casual shirts such as our flanell and linen shirts or our Lynx and Rivero shirts. Confeccoes TM is a small manufacturer with around 40 employees based in Freamunde. The company is specialised in the production of high-quality dress shirts. Our Porto shirts are made by Confeccoes TM.
Picture taken by René Grünenfelder at Marfel, one of our main shirtmaking partners.
Picture taken by René Grünenfelder at Bontex in Maglaj, Bosnia-Herzegovina.
Fabrics
We source our organic cotton and organic linen fabrics from the most renowned European weaving mills for shirt fabrics. Our main dying and weaving partner is based in the North of Portugal. The mill was founded in 1958 and employs around 550 people. The company spins, dyes yarns, weaves and finishes exquisite fabrics. It is certified according to the GOTS standards. All the fabrics for our casual shirts are made at our Portuguese weaving partner.
Quality check at our Portuguese Weaving Partner (taken by René Grünenfelder).
View into the fabric production of our Austrian weaving partner.
Yarns
We advise our weaving mills to source organic cotton or organic linen yarns. They buy these yarns from various spinning mills on the market. All of them are certified according to the GOTS standard.
One of the spinning mills that provides our weaving partners with organic cotton and organic linen yarns is Mundifios based in North Portugal. Today Mundifios spins mainly organic yarns from cotton, linen or wool in Portugal but also trades with all kind of conventional yarns in various yarn qualities. Amongst others, Mundifios is certified according to our GOTS standard.
Another yarn supplier is Filasa in Guimaraes, Portugal. The company takes sustainability and their responsibility seriously. They invest and research in order to reduce the use of water in the dying process. It is certified according to the GOTS and oeko-Tex standard.
Amongst others, the yarns used for our Oxford shirts were spun by Narteks, a family-owned spinning mill in Turkey. The company is highly specialised and has a year-long experience in the processing of cotton. It is also certified according to the GOTS standard.
René Grünenfelder and owner Paulo Fernandes of Mundifios.
Yarn spinning at Eurotex, Kohlapur, India (picture taken by René Grünenfelder).
Raw Materials
Whenever possible we integrate organic cotton from the bioRe® projects in Tanzania and India into the manufacturing of our fabrics. The integration of these cotton sources guarantee us full traceability of our cotton shirts. bioRe® India and bioRe® Tanzania are organisations founded by the Swiss yarn trader Remei AG based in Rotkreuz. Both organisations buy organic cotton from 4'000 (India) and 2'000 (Tanzania) small-scale farmers.
The bioRe® organisations instruct farmers in the cultivation of organic cotton, provide them with GMO-free cotton seeds, guarantee the purchase of their harvest and provide them with a 15% premium (based on average 5 years market price). The cotton sourced from these organisations are cultivated, picked and ginned according to the GOTS standard. Organic cotton grown with the bioRe® organisations can be found in many of our Classic Shirts and in our Flannel Shirts.
One of the Indian cotton farmers supplying bioRe® India with organic cotton (picture taken by René Grünenfelder).
