It starts with the harvest

The journey of a beautiful linen begins in the fields as the farm labourers skilfully tease the cotton off the plant with unrelenting precision. 

Our connected harvest-to-hotel ethos means that we weave great relationships and ethical practice through every link of our supply chain, always placing an emphasis on renewable energy and worker welfare. 

It’s all central to our defining company vision: to keep championing the work of the world’s finest linen artists and bring it to new global audiences.

Our process

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The Harvest

The most fragile of plants, cotton must be harvested as soon as it is fully ripened. If left too long, weather conditions will adversely affect the quality and yield of the crop. The harvest can be done by hand or machine and the picked seed cotton is then baled ready for Ginning.

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Ginning

This is the process of separating the lint from the seed. The cotton first goes through dryers and then cleaning equipment to remove foreign matter. It is then pulled through the closely spaced ribs of the gin that remove the seeds before being baled. Each bale will then be inspected and graded ready for delivery to the mill.

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The Spinning Mill

At the mill, the lint is cleaned further before going on to be carded; a process which separates and aligns the fibres into a thin web. The higher quality fibres can then go on to be combed giving a smoother, finer yarn. The carded or combed yarn is then drawn through a funnel-shaped device, providing a soft rope-like strand. Up to eight of these strands can be gradually drawn and twisted together to create spun yarn.

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The Weaving Process

The modern weaving machine typically produces around 200m of fabric a day. On the loom, strengthened (sized) lengthwise yarns (warp) form the skeleton of the fabric, these are interlaced with a filling yarn (weft). The main weaves for our sector are Plain Weave, in which the weft yarn is passed alternately over one warp yarn and under the next, and Satin Weave where there are fewer interlacings. This allows the yarns from one direction to dominate the ‘face’ of the cloth.

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Bleaching and Processing

The woven cloth must first be de-sized to remove the products used to strengthen the warp yarns. It can then be carefully bleached white before being stretched, straightened and heat set into finished fabric. Other processes can include Sanforising (a process of mechanically pre-shrinking the fabric) and mercerising (a process of swelling and aligning the fibres to give more lustre to the cloth).

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Cutting, Hemming and Embroidery

After final quality inspection, the fabric is ready to be turned into product. Each product has a detailed specification showing dimensions, stitching details, such as coloured ID hems and embellishments of embroidered logos. Finished products are packed in cartons ready for shipment.

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Quality Control

All goods arriving in our warehouse are subjected to quality inspection. Representative samples are inspected for colour, dimensions, stitching, hemming and fabric quality. In-house tests can be performed to assess the starch levels, tear strength, bow, thread count and gsm.

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Hotel

Our UK Warehouse has a capacity of over 750 pallets and holds over 450 product lines. Our logistics can handle deliveries worldwide from one small carton to full container loads. Each order, large or small, is packed and delivered to our customers with care and precision.

woman at computer looking at linens

A tailor to your needs

We work closely with our clients to design and deliver the exact product that meets their individual demands.

Our design software allows us to create a product that is specific to your requirements. We can achieve a perfect balance between form and function, luxury and durability. We also have the capability to design the construction of the fabric to satisfy your most exacting preferences, be that a jacquard weave or a plain percale.

Research and development

We are constantly researching product quality with the leading testing houses in Europe, as well as our own in-house laboratories, to ensure we are delivering continuous improvements for both hotels and laundries.

At a less scientific, but equally important level, we conduct an ongoing dialogue with our clients to assess the performance of our bed and bath linens in terms of shrinkage, whiteness and other key parameters. We then feed comments back to our mills abroad to implement any changes required.

Exacting quality control

At Exclusive Linens, investment into our in-house testing technology, using the latest British-made instruments, ensures that our products are always of the highest quality. To support this, we also invest heavily in state-of-the-art manufacturing techniques at the textile mills.

Beyond that, our meticulous attention to detail and quality control ensure that the high expectations of our clients are always met.

Unrivalled service

Just like you, we know the importance of impeccable service. Our philosophy is simple; no email goes unanswered, no phone is left ringing.

We certainly enjoy a challenge: when a laundry called very late one afternoon, requesting an emergency delivery early the next morning, past the hours of standard couriers. Undeterred, we we were able to obtain an alternative vehicle and drove the delivery ourselves.

We are always prepared to go the extra mile for our clients. We have been known to use the services of aircraft flying from Islamabad to London Heathrow, just so we can make a delivery to a hotel within 48 hours.