From Pasture to Garment: 23 Steps That Turn Ordos Cashmere into a Sweater

Most buyers see a finished cashmere sweater on a shop rail. Few ever see what it took to get there. A single 250-gram pullover carries, hidden inside its soft twist, a year-long journey: combed from a goat on the Albas plateau, sorted in a Mongolian grading room, spun on Italian frames, knitted on a German STOLL machine, washed, mended, pressed, and packed — every step traceable, every step done under one roof.

This is what that journey actually looks like inside our Ordos facility.

Phase 1: Pasture & Harvest (Steps 1–4)

Step 1. Spring combing (April–May)

The Albas white goat grows a fine underdown each winter, then sheds it naturally in spring. Herders comb the fiber by hand with coarse combs — not shear. Shearing would mix in guard hair and shorten fiber length. Hand combing preserves the long, parallel fibers that later spin into stronger yarn.

Step 2. Initial grading at the herder’s home

Each herder separates the combings into three grades on the spot: white (premium, the underdown), brown (mid-grade), and purple (lower grade, from older goats). The grades never mix from this point forward.

Step 3. Coarse cleaning

The raw combings still contain guard hair, dirt, and lanolin. A first pass through a coarse shaker removes the largest debris before transport. This is just rough prep — the real cleaning happens at the factory.

Step 4. Transport to the dehairing facility

The graded fiber is sealed in bales, tagged by herder and grade, and trucked to our Ordos facility within 24 hours. Bales never travel more than 300 km from pasture to factory — short supply chains are how we keep the fiber in prime condition.

Phase 2: Dehairing & Top Making (Steps 5–9)

Step 5. Sorting and opening

At the factory, fiber is spread by hand on long light tables. Sorters pick out remaining guard hairs, vegetable matter, and any matted clumps. White fiber stays on white-only tables — even a few brown fibers downgrade an entire batch.

Step 6. Fine dehairing (Italian line)

The sorted fiber passes through a sequence of fine dehairing cylinders. Each cylinder uses opposing airflow and fine combs to separate the coarse guard hair (which falls out) from the fine underdown (which stays on the belt). We run each batch through the line twice — once for a rough pass, once for a polish — to push cashmere purity above 99.95%.

Step 7. Yield measurement

Clean cashmere comes out the other end. The yield — clean fiber as a percentage of raw combings — typically runs 35–45% for premium Albas white. Anything below 30% means the raw material was poor; we reject those bales at the source, not the factory.

Step 8. Washing

A gentle aqueous wash removes the last traces of lanolin, sweat, and dust. We do not use chemical scouring agents. The water is Ordos groundwater, soft and low in iron (iron turns white cashmere yellow over time).

Step 9. Combing into tops

The clean, dry fiber is fed into a gill box and then a worsted comber. The output is a continuous sliver — the “top” — with all fibers parallelized. Tops are wound onto cans and stored in a climate-controlled room (18°C, 55% humidity) until spinning.

Phase 3: Spinning (Steps 10–13)

Step 10. Dyeing (if requested)

Greige (undyed) tops go straight to spinning. For dyed yarn, the tops pass through a dye bath first. We use reactive dyes with low-temperature fixation; the result is a colorfast fiber that doesn’t bleed or fade in normal wear.

Step 11. Drawing and roving

The top is drawn out (fibers aligned and doubled) and then twisted slightly into roving — a soft, loose rope of fiber ready for the final spin.

Step 12. Ring spinning

The roving passes through a ring spinner at high speed. Twist per inch is set according to the yarn count — a 26/2 yarn (26 metric count, 2-ply) for a fine-gauge knitwear, a 36/2 for an even finer next-to-skin layer. Twist direction alternates between plies to balance the yarn and prevent skewing in the finished fabric.

Step 13. Steaming and winding

Spun yarn is steam-set to lock in the twist, then wound onto cones. Each cone is labeled with lot number, count, twist, and dye batch. From this point, every cone is traceable back to the bale of raw fiber it came from.

Phase 4: Knitting (Steps 14–18)

Step 14. Knit program development

Before any knitting begins, a sample garment is programmed on the STOLL machine. The program specifies stitch gauge, shaping points, neckline geometry, and any intarsia or jacquard patterns. The program is tested on a 30 cm swatch, washed, measured, and adjusted — usually 2–3 rounds before production.

Step 15. Whole-garment knitting (STOLL CMS)

Our STOLL CMS 330 machines knit the entire sweater as a single piece — no side seams, no shoulder seams. This is called “fully-fashioned” knitting. It eliminates the weak points where cut-and-sewn garments break down, and it saves roughly 12% of yarn versus cut-and-sew.

Step 16. Linking (hand-finished seaming)

Each piece exits the knitting machine with open loops along the seams. Skilled linking operators use a hand-operated looping machine to join the loops stitch-by-stitch. A single crewneck pullover takes 35–45 minutes to link. It’s slow, but the seam is invisible and won’t unravel.

Step 17. Trimming and mending

Loose threads are trimmed, and any small holes or dropped stitches are mended by hand. Mendings are tracked per piece — if a sweater comes back from a customer with a defect, we can trace it to the mender and the shift.

Step 18. Washing and fulling

The linked pieces are washed in soft water with a neutral pH detergent, then fulled (lightly felted under controlled agitation). Fulling tightens the stitch structure, gives the sweater its final hand-feel, and pre-shrinks it so the customer’s size doesn’t shift after the first wash.

Phase 5: Finishing & Packing (Steps 19–23)

Step 19. Pressing and shaping

Each sweater is placed on a steam press shaped to its final form — crewneck, V-neck, cardigan, etc. Steam relaxes any remaining fiber stress and sets the shape permanently.

Step 20. Final inspection

A 100% inspection, piece by piece, under daylight-balanced lamps. Inspectors check for: pills, holes, missed stitches, dye spots, sizing against the spec sheet, and hand-feel. Any piece with a Class A defect goes back to mending; Class B goes to seconds.

Step 21. Brand labeling (for OEM clients)

If the order is private-label, the customer’s woven brand label, care label, hangtag, and polybag are added. We stock standard care labels and can print custom ones within 7 days for repeat orders.

Step 22. Folding and bagging

Sweaters are folded to a standard pattern, inserted into a translucent zip bag with a desiccant sachet, and sealed. The bag protects against moisture and dust during shipping without trapping humidity.

Step 23. Carton packing and export documents

Cartons are sized for export (typically 60×40×40 cm, holding 25–40 sweaters depending on weight). Each carton is labeled with lot, size run, count, and destination port. The export document set — commercial invoice, packing list, certificate of origin, and any buyer-specific documentation — is generated and double-checked before the container is sealed.

What this means for a B2B buyer

A few things worth taking away:

• Vertical control is rare. Most “cashmere brands” buy from traders; we own every step. That’s why we can trace any finished sweater back to the herder.
• Time matters. A spring-harvested fiber that becomes a fall sweater is roughly six months end-to-end. Orders placed in late spring can be ready by October. Orders placed in fall wait for next spring’s harvest.
• MOQ is real, not a marketing line. The 100-piece minimum exists because below that, the time spent on programming and linking per piece makes the unit cost prohibitive.
• Sustainability starts with short supply chains. Less than 300 km from pasture to factory means lower transport emissions, fresher fiber on arrival, and faster feedback loops when something needs to change.

Want to see it in person?

We host B2B buyers at our Ordos facility year-round. A typical tour is two days: one day at the dehairing and spinning line, one day at the knitting and finishing floor. Travel logistics are simple — fly to Baotou (BAV) or Ordos (DSN), we arrange pickup, and the on-site team handles everything else.

Book a factory visit → or download our 2024 catalog for the full product range and certifications.