HARVEY, N.B. -- A wool company in New Brunswick is receiving the royal treatment, after being involved in a campaign started by Prince Charles.
Briggs & Little Woolen Mills call themselves "Canada’s oldest Woolen Mill," operating in York Mills, N.B., since 1867.
Now their wool is being used to weave rugs in India, and Prince Charles has a role to play in it all.
The "Campaign for Wool" was launched in Canada by Prince Charles, Prince of Wales and the Duchess of Cornwall in 2014, with the idea of bringing attention to wool producers around the world.
“I believe that the whole idea is to give awareness to the natural resource,” says owner-operator Mike Little. “I think it kind of gets lost or forgotten about a little bit.”
The campaign placed an order for 1,100 pounds, which is 4,400 skeins of one-ply natural white yarn.
That yarn was then sent to India, to be spun into rugs by designs created by Sarah Richardson and Creative Matters Inc. in Toronto
The skeins of yarn left New Brunswick and made their way to Nepal, where they are currently being worked on.
Little says he can’t wait to see the finished products.
“They’re all about making people aware of what wool is and how good it is,” says office manager Leah Little. “It is sustainable, it wears well. When you’re done with a project you can throw it in the ground and bury it, and it will disappear.”
Little says business has been good this year, with shelves usually full of wool barely staying stocked.
But the campaign's order was one of their biggest.
“It was a little over $10,000 worth of products and I did just a little quick figuring. 1,100 pounds of single-ply yarn actually equates to a little over 1.9 million yards,” says Little.
