Merino wool possesses a lot of virtues that make it excellent for outdoor pursuits. It’s comfortable against the skin, it provides warmth in the cold and can also keep you cool when it’s hot, its naturally fire resistant (useful around the campfire) and, perhaps best of all, it’s anti-microbial, meaning odours don’t build up in it anywhere near as fast as they do in synthetics or cotton clothing. It’s also great from a sustainability perspective, being a natural, renewable substance that biodegrades over time.

Here at Outdoors Magic, we often praise the likes of Icebreaker and Smartwool – two of the main Merino wool focussed outdoor brands – for their sustainability credentials. But, there’s a new kid on the block that claims to create products with an even lower carbon footprint, and their name is Nuyarn. 

Based out of New Zealand, Nuyarn claims to have come up with a much more efficient way of creating Merino yarns, one that requires 30% less materials and that uses uses 73% less energy compared to the common methods. The company also claims that the product is more effective and also far more durable and long lasting. In fact, it purports that for every Nuyarn garment you buy, you would need to buy nine conventionally produced equivalents in order to equal its lifespan (nuyarn.com).

The Construction

So what’s different? Well, Nuyarn say that the clincher is in the fact that their yarns are spun using a twist-free technique. Most Merino garment manufacturers, including Icebreaker and Smartwool, will often use a traditional technique called ring spinning where the yarns are tightly twisted like a rope and this, Nuyarn claim, makes it difficult for them to absorb moisture and to also let moisture go once it’s been absorbed. Nuyarn instead “drafts” its wool fibres loosely along a filament, resulting in two ply yarns.

The filament involved here is currently made from virgin synthetics, but the company says that it does not require elastane, Lycra or Spandex in its yarns to make them stretchy and that they have a mechanical stretch that will last for the entire lifetime of the garment – that’s thanks both to its twist-free yarns and the fact they’re also crafted into two layers.