Political support for linen and hemp is growing in northern France and could result in a new sovereign fund to help growers, scutchers and spinners drive innovation. The industry welcomes this but is also focusing on building bridges with garment brands.

Fibres build bridges

The Alliance for European Flax-Linen and Hemp has produced a new study that concludes that the fibres have a high potential for market growth. Specialist Paris-based consultancy Kéa carried out the research, conducting more than 100 interviews with representatives of 80 different stakeholder organisations. It worked with the support of the Alliance (formerly CELC), of the Institut Français de la Mode and of the regional government of Normandy, one of the key regions for producing the fibres. 

Hemp and flax remain “marginal in the world of textile fibres”, the study concluded, but they have remarkable performance attributes, undeniably impressive environmental credentials and huge emotional appeal. Their capacity to keep conquering the hearts and minds of brands and consumers is strong, the study says. “People want to buy natural fibres in higher volumes,” Kéa senior partner Céline Choain says. “We’ve reached a plateau for polymers.” The project partners held an event in Paris at the end of March to present the study and the conclusions they have drawn from it. Senior political figures from Normandy and another of the key regions for the production chain, Hauts-de-France, also took part.

Supply-chain tensions

President of the Alliance, Bart Depourcq, who runs the Van de Bilt scutching mill in the Netherlands, says everyone involved in growing and using the fibres and fabrics is aware of a tension between supply and demand at the moment. Crops from farms in northern France, Belgium and the Netherlands have, in recent years, been between 140,000 and 160,000 tonnes of flax fibre per year. These figures represent an important drop from annual volumes of more than 180,000 tonnes towards the end of the last decade. The industry blames covid-19 and three consecutive weaker harvests for this.

The president’s colleague Pascal Prevost, a Normandy-based flax farmer and the Alliance’s president of promotion, says he is in no doubt that climate change is a factor, with lower-than-usual rainfall and sudden changes in temperature in the prime growing area that runs parallel to the English Channel, roughly from Caen to Amsterdam. “It’s about the relationship between the plant, the soil and the climate,” Mr Prevost says. “We will need to wait to see exactly what the impact has been on the length and quality of our fibres. It could take between three and five years before we really know.” 

Bart Depourcq says he is pleased with the results the new study has produced; they make it clear that growers and mills need to deliver more product and that they deserve to attract increased investment. “And we must improve quality,” he adds. “We must look at new crop varieties and promote innovation and automation in our fields and factories. We need to try to expand the production area and we need to work together to agree on a common set of terms for describing these fibres.” He says he knows these objectives make the programme that the Alliance is setting out for itself an ambitious one.

One further clear message that Mr Depourcq has picked up from the study is, perhaps, the most ambitious of all. He says upstream players in the flax-linen and hemp value chains must work to build better relationships with clothing brands. “We ought to work with the brands as partners,” he says, “and not see ourselves as mere suppliers.”

Brand engagement

On this subject, the chief executive of the Alliance, Marie-Emmanuelle Belzung, says she takes encouragement from the success Kéa had in convincing finished apparel brands (40 of the interviewees were from brands) to take part in the recent study. “This is the first time that has happened,” she says. More than 75% of flax-linen goes into fashion, but flax fibre represents less than 0.5% of the volume of raw material the fashion industry consumes. She also takes heart, though, from what she calls the entrepreneurial spirit of the growers of the fibres and of the mills who prepare them for use in jeans, jackets, dresses, skirts, shirts, shorts and intimate apparel, sometimes on their own, sometimes in blends with wool, silk, cashmere and other fibres. Many of the companies involved are small, but she describes those who run them as “people who are ready to move forward”.

It will help Alliance members if the organisation can increase in size (“growing the eco-system” is how Ms Belzung phrases this) and cement European producers’ position as global leaders. In 2021, more than 70% of the linen produced globally bore a certified European flax label of origin. And she agrees it will also help if producers can keep improving the quality of what they bring to market. She insists that the new study will provide a solid platform for each aspect of this work.

Farmer Pascal Prevost would like to know if there are other regions in Europe that could join the eco-system; he thinks tests on the soil in some areas would be worthwhile. He adds that winter-sown flax could also be part of the answer. This practice, of sowing flax seeds in wetter winter months instead of a traditional springtime sowing programme, is becoming more common he says.

Hemp’s redemption

Normandy’s regional president, Hervé Morin, says one of the ideas he supports for eco-system expansion is growing more hemp as well as more flax (Marie-Emmanuelle Belzung says the two fibres are “cousins” and not in competition with one another).

A hemp planting programme in Normandy will go from 20 hectares in 2022 to 600 hectares in 2024, the region’s president says, adding that he is not surprised at farmers’ interest. “The plain of Caen has good soil and farmers there used to cultivate sugar beet,” he explains. “But the sugar refinery has shut down now and the farmers need an alternative crop.” 

For Ornella Bignami, an authority on both fibres and a long-time partner of the Alliance, there are grounds for optimism for a revival in hemp production in her native Italy too. She points out that farmers in Lombardy were producers of flax and of hemp for decades. This is the reason, she explains, why mills in provinces such as Varese, Bergamo and Biella developed world-renowned expertise in producing linen fabrics; the links to the land were strong and the levels of knowledge in companies such as Crespi and Solbiati were unparalleled. “Then, some decades ago, as many people know, there was a textile industry crisis and many companies closed,” Ms Bignami says. “It was very sad.”

And with regard to hemp, she says Italy was the world’s largest producer of that fibre until as recently as the 1970s. Government attitudes at the time struggled to separate the idea of growing hemp for textiles from the plant’s connections to drugs. “Now there is a lot of interest in hemp again,” she continues. “We are seeing mills adapting machinery developed for flax fibres to make hemp fibres for weaving now. I would like to see innovation here and for dedicated hemp machinery to emerge as a result of that.” Even before it reaches mills, hemp fibres require their own machinery because the plants need to be cut rather than pulled from the earth, as is the case for flax.

Benefits of buffer stock

All moves to maximise volumes make sense to the mills; they would like to be able to build up a buffer stock to allow them to respond more quickly and more positively to demand from spinners and brands. Bertrand Decock, who runs a scutching mill near Dunkirk, says recent investment in new machinery there has helped his company increase its yield by 10%. It is now able to separate more useable material from the long flax fibres it treats, but it cannot always source as much fibre as it would like. He wants to be able to store some of the straw-like flax stems and have quick access to them when needed to make scutched fibre for spinners. 

Scutchers’ value chain is particularly long because, although farmers in the European Union grow more than 70% of the world’s flax fibres, 73% of all the spinning of linen yarn after scutching takes place in China and 59% of the weaving of fabric from the yarn takes place there as well. “There are still some spinning mills in Europe,” the Alliance’s head of economic research, Damien Durand, points out. “Three new ones have opened in France in the last few years, with two more in the pipeline, one in France and one in Portugal.”

On the spin

Two of the newer spinning mills, Emanuel Lang in Alsace and Safilin near Béthune, were partners in a 2021 project called Linpossible. The project’s name was a play on words: it sounds like the word for ‘the impossible’, but is made up of the words for ‘linen’ and ‘possible’. The partners said they wanted to reintroduce the spinning of hemp and linen yarn to France, with Emmanuel Lang specialising in dry spinning and Safilin in wet spinning.

Safilin president, Olivier Guillaume, says he regards spinning as the bridge between fibre production and the market. Interest and demand from consumers, which he says brand customers are passing back to Safilin, make him optimistic about the future, but he is another who insists technological innovation is imperative. “I was lucky,” he explains. “For Linpossible I was able to use existing equipment, but we have to have innovation because we need to rethink spinning. At the moment, the raw material has to go through 12 machines before you produce a yarn.”

Normandy-based Natup Fibres has an even newer spinning operation, having produced its first linen yarns in 2022. One difference here is that founder, Karim Behlouli, has integrated scutching and spinning into an operation that makes finished fabric as well, using both hemp and linen to offer brands products that are 100% made in France. Mr Belhouli, who received support from the national government and from Normandy’s regional government to get Natup Fibres up and running, says he realises market share for his fabrics will be limited because the price will be higher. Research at the start of the Natup project revealed that a linen shirt, for sale in the European Union for €150, had cost around €15 to make in Bangladesh. “Raw materials account for 46% of the total cost,” he explains, “and I can tell you the same shirt would cost €120 to make in France. If brands want to use our materials, the price will be high. Perhaps they will accept lower margins. After all, monetary margins are not the only margins or the only benefits.”

Mr Behlouli echoes the Safilin CEO’s supplication for machinery innovation but points out that funding models such as those available through large European Union projects provide support for research and development, training and so on, but not usually for machinery. Perhaps the brands will help, Olivier Guillaume suggests. Investment in “having this industry in France again” will pay off if fashion brands place bigger, more frequent and fairly priced orders for hemp and linen fabric. “I hope the brands will help us,” he says. “I hope they will help prove that we were right to make those investments.”

Current collections

Dior’s current women’s collection includes garments such as a flared, mid-length skirt and a blouse, both made from denim woven from 70% cotton and 30% linen. Several pieces in the collection, including a puff-sleeve top and a cardigan, are 100% knitted from seven-gauge hemp. The assistant environmental director at the brand’s parent group, LVMH, Alexandre Capelli, likes the way the Dior design team has created these pieces. He is also enthusiastic about the future possibilities that blends with wool, silk and other fibres will offer.

“Previously, there was a view in design studios that these were not very ‘glam’ materials, but things are changing, fortunately,” Mr Capelli explains. “What’s happening now is that designers are telling themselves that if, say, linen is a material that crimples easily, they can use that as an asset.” He insists that the group wants to support the linen and hemp production side and that, even if its consumption of these fibres is still small, “things are going in the right direction”.

The president of Normandy, Hervé Morin, and his counterpart in Hauts-de-France, Xavier Bertrand, are now talking publicly about putting together a sovereign fund to help things go in the right direction more quickly for linen and hemp. Mr Morin argues that the prominence of France’s luxury industry presents the sector with a clear opportunity.

“What we need is a regulated system with the guarantee of a stable price in both directions, for farmers and their industry partners,” he says. “The strategic fund will help us do that and support the idea of creating a buffer stock of fibres. We are going to try to set this up.”

For his part, Xavier Bertrand says there is confidence in the Hauts-de-France region in the potential for hemp and linen to be key parts of what he calls “a time of [economic] transformation”. He believes in the fibres and in the eco-system and says he wants to help producers create more value. “Things are already happening,” he says. 

A new sovereign fund for flax, linen and hemp production in the European Union could help farmers secure a stable price for their crops. PHOTO: Alliance for European Flax-Linen and Hemp

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