DAVID NIEPER, a British fashion house designing and manufacturing luxury women’s clothing, knit-wear and nightwear in Derbyshire/ UK for almost 60 years, has installed a state of the art dyehouse with the latest BRÜCKNER finishing technology. DAVID NIEPER Ltd. is a family owned fashion house founded in 1961. The company designs and manufacturers its entire women’s fashion collections in Alfreton, Derbyshire/ UK, including both knitting and sewing operations, as well as catalogue printing for its mail-order operations throughout Europe. Superior product quality and customer satisfaction are the key factors for its long lasting success and in order to improve quality further and secure just in time production DAVID NIEPER has decided to introduce dyeing, finishing and printing processes for fabrics. For this, the company acquired a new production site for the installation of a complete new dyeing and finishing and digital printing facility.
Christoper Nieper OBE, Chief Executive DAVID NIEPER Ltd. says: “This is an exciting opportunity for our business. Working in partnership with BRÜCKNER means that we are able to harness new technology which will make DAVID NIEPER the first fashion manufacturer in the UK to digitally print onto cotton jersey. The digital print factory is the latest and largest investment our company has made in sustainable production. We challenged BRÜCKNER to provide us with a system that would offer superb quality, while upholding our commitment to sustainable textile production.”
BRÜCKNER Textile Technologies supported this approach from the very beginning – as a first step, development trials have been conducted with DAVID NIEPER’s project team in the show-room at BRÜCKNER’s Headquarter in Leonberg near Stuttgart to determine together the most suitable machine layout for an excellent preparation for printing process in combination with an extraordinary fabric handle. Key factors to overcome these requirements are a very gentle fabric tension system to avoid any excessive fabric tension during production, followed by a soft, but effi-cient, compacting process as last step to achieve a unique fabric handle.
The installed 3-bay BRÜCKNER stenter frame is especially designed for running small production lots, but due to the unique BRÜCKNER feature of alternating heating source arrangement every 1.5m, still 6 independent temperature zones can be adjusted according to the individual requirements of each fabric. Furthermore, the 3-bay BRÜCKNER stenter is equipped with newly developed, completely lubrication free vertical chain, which is reducing maintenance efforts, cost and products wastage. After the stenter treatment, the fabrics will be brought to a brand new inkjet printing department, containing the latest digital printers for brilliant images and unmatched colour depth. After the printing process, as a last step, the fabrics will be compacted on a BRÜCKNER rubber belt/ felt belt compacting range. As the only system available on the market, this machine offers the possibility to handle stable woven fabrics but in the same way also knitted fabrics containing very sensitive fibres such as fine cotton, viscose, Lyocell and silk blended with elastane. The felt belt calender, following the rubber belt compacting unit, gives the fabrics an unrivaled appearance and helps the fabric to drape beautifully and have a luxurious feel to satisfy the demands of DAVID NIEPER’s challenging customers. BRÜCKNER thanks DAVID NIEPER for this challenging project!