Our cutting facility
5 days a week
75.000 pieces in one week
3.4 million pieces in a year
The strength of having our own cutting facility
In 2005, we bought the cutting factory – Danva – in Lithuania. Much like owning our own dyehouse, the acquisition of our own cutting facility allows us to control and influence a key part of our supply chain. This makes it possible for us to ensure a consistent and very high quality in what we do.
Working conditions
We have a very close co-operation with our Lithuanian colleagues and are in daily contact with them. We have around 20 colleagues working at the facility - predominantly women – but also a few, young men to do some of the physically heavy lifting. The men and women at the facility work 5 days a week – from 7 a.m. to 3.30 p.m. There’s also an evening shift four days a week from 12:00 noon to 8.30 p.m.
Over the years, the facility has gradually been upgraded. A ventilation system has been installed to significantly improve the indoor climate and over the span of the past 3 years, we have upgraded to state-of-the-art machinery. The new automated cutters have also helped improve the indoor climate – as opposed to manually cutting the fabric, the automated machines limit the specs of dust floating around the facility significantly, thus improving the quality of the air and eliminating masks that are typical in this type of production.
Daily operations
At Danva, all our cotton and merino wool fabric is cut. The fabric arrives at the facility from our dyehouse in Denmark in huge fabric rolls. The rolls are then carefully loaded onto large cutting tables. The fabric is layered – between 25 and 50 layers at a time. An air vacuum is created to grip the fabric and hold it in its place. The vacuum makes it easier for the cutter to cut its way through the layers. The patterns are programmed into the cutter, so it knows exactly how and where to make the cuts. These patterns are meticulously planned out to make sure we make the absolute most of each piece of fabric.
The twenty people working at the facility can cut an impressive amount of clothing in just 5 days – in fact, when circumstances are just right, they cut around 75.000 pieces of clothing a week. That amounts to a whopping 3.4 million pieces of clothing a year.
Minimising waste from production
A key focus at the facility is minimising waste and making the most of each roll of fabric. As a rule of thumb, at least 80% of the fabric must be utilised – but more often than not, we exceed by upwards of 90% utilised. As you can imagine, that means methodically planning each pattern to make them as precise and optimised as possible. Our pattern planner, Stefan, jokingly compares this part of the process to a large-scale game of Tetris. Each cut is important and must fit together to minimise fabric waste.
The small fabric scraps from cutting are collected and sorted so they can be recycled. Some are turned into the wool patches you can buy on our website to repair your wool clothing. Others are sent to a recycling facility in Lithuania. Here, the leftover materials made from 100% natural fibres (such as wool and cotton) are turned back into yarn and later reused as fabric in new textiles. At DILLING, we’re unable to reuse the fabric in our own production, as the quality of the materials inevitably reduced during the recycling process.
Fabric scraps containing synthetic fibres (such as elastane or nylon) are transformed into non-woven materials like insulation for jackets, geotextiles, and sound-proofing materials. This way, the scraps do not go to waste but are kept in circulation.
Previously, we sent the scraps to a recycling facility in the UK to avoid waste. Today, they are transported to the Lithuanian facility, as it is geographically closer to our cutting facility, helping to reduce both transport time and CO₂ emissions.
Read more about our approach to circular production and unsold textiles here.
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