Sourcing Recycled Cashmere: A Buyer’s Guide

Recycled cashmere has become an increasingly sought-after raw material among brands, designers, knitwear manufacturers, and textile professionals in recent years. Alongside the growing focus on sustainability, there is another important factor: the opportunity to use a precious fibre such as cashmere by recovering and giving new value to materials that already exist.

For a buyer, however, sourcing recycled cashmere means understanding exactly what you are buying, how it has been produced, and what can actually be certified.

Terms such as recycled cashmere, pre-consumer, post-consumer, regenerated, and GRS certified are often used rather loosely, but they are not necessarily equivalent.

In this guide, we aim to clarify these concepts based on the experience of Hircus Filati, which commissions the production of its recycled cashmere yarn to a specialised GRS-certified partner in the Prato textile district.

What Does Recycled Cashmere Mean?

Recycled cashmere is a fibre obtained by recovering materials containing cashmere which, instead of being discarded, are selected and processed so that they can be transformed into yarn again.

Depending on the process and type of product, the raw material may come from pre-consumer or post-consumer sources.

Pre-consumer material generally comes from waste generated before a product reaches the final consumer, such as production surplus, offcuts, or materials resulting from industrial processing.

Post-consumer material, on the other hand, comes from products that have already completed a previous cycle of use.

This distinction is important for buyers because the simple definition "recycled cashmere" does not necessarily tell the whole story of the material.

How Is Recycled Cashmere Produced?

Prato has a particularly important tradition in the recovery and recycling of textile fibres.

The process can vary depending on the raw material used and the desired result, but it generally involves several stages: selection of the material, separation by composition and colour where necessary, preparation, mechanical processing to return the material to a fibrous state, and subsequent spinning.

One of the fundamental skills involved in this process is precisely selection.

The quality of the final yarn depends not only on its declared composition, but also on the quality of the original material, the ability to select it correctly, and the expertise involved in the subsequent processing stages.

Recycling cashmere does not simply mean "shredding an old sweater and turning it back into yarn." Behind a good recycled cashmere yarn lies genuine industrial and artisanal expertise.

Why Is Prato So Important?

The Prato textile district has a long-standing tradition in the selection, recovery, and regeneration of textile fibres.

Long before concepts such as the circular economy and sustainability became central to the fashion industry's communication, Prato already had a specialised supply chain dedicated to recovering textile materials and giving them a new life.

This knowledge, accumulated over generations, still represents an important technical heritage today.

It is within this district that Hircus Filati commissions the production of its recycled cashmere yarn to a specialised GRS-certified partner based in Prato.

This allows us to combine our experience in yarn selection and distribution with the manufacturing expertise of a company specialised in processing recycled materials.

Recycled Cashmere vs Virgin Cashmere: Which Is Better?

This is one of the questions we receive most frequently.

The answer is: both, provided they are well made and used for the right application.

Virgin cashmere is made from new cashmere fibre obtained from cashmere goats and has not undergone any previous cycle of use or recycling.

Recycled cashmere, on the other hand, recovers existing cashmere fibre and introduces it back into the production cycle.

The mechanical recycling process inevitably tends to shorten some of the fibres. For this reason, recycled cashmere yarn can have different technical and processing characteristics compared with high-quality virgin cashmere.

This does not mean that one is necessarily "good" and the other "bad", nor that one should completely replace the other.

They are two different products.

High-quality virgin cashmere can offer particular characteristics in terms of fineness, consistency, strength, and handle. Good recycled cashmere, on the other hand, makes it possible to recover and give new value to an extremely precious fibre, reducing the need to rely exclusively on new raw material.

The choice should therefore depend on the project, the final product, the brand positioning, the type of manufacturing process, and the desired result.

What Is GRS Certification?

GRS stands for Global Recycled Standard.

It is a voluntary international standard for products containing recycled materials. Certification includes requirements relating to verification of recycled content and traceability throughout the supply chain, as well as requirements concerning certain environmental, social, and chemical aspects of production.

For a buyer, however, it is essential to understand one important point: GRS should not be used simply as a generic sustainability label.

Simply saying "we use GRS-certified recycled cashmere" without understanding which company, material, or stage of the supply chain is actually covered by the certification can be misleading.

What Does GRS Certification Actually Cover?

Certification applies to operators, materials, and transactions included within a verified chain of custody.

In other words, having a certified supplier at the beginning of the supply chain does not automatically mean that every product manufactured further down the chain can be marketed as a GRS-certified product.

This is particularly important for brands, knitwear manufacturers, and buyers.

A yarn may come from a certified supply chain, but this does not automatically mean that any sweater, scarf, or accessory subsequently produced using that yarn can be declared GRS certified.

To maintain a certified claim throughout the supply chain, the requirements established by the standard and the relevant chain of custody must be respected.

It is therefore always important to distinguish between:

recycled material supplied by a certified producer

and

a GRS-certified finished product.

They are not necessarily the same thing.

Hircus Filati Recycled Cashmere

Hircus Filati operates in Prato and supplies both yarns sourced from stock and available lots from Italian spinning mills and textile companies, as well as yarns developed through our own commissioned production.

For our recycled cashmere, Hircus Filati commissions production to a specialised partner based in Prato that holds GRS certification.

Production is therefore carried out on our behalf by a company specialised in the recovery and transformation of textile fibres.

For us, it is important to communicate this point accurately. We do not want to use the GRS acronym simply as a marketing tool; we want our customers to understand where the certification actually applies within the supply chain.

Our production partner is GRS certified, and the recycled cashmere is produced for Hircus Filati by this company in accordance with the applicable requirements for certified production.

Documentation relating to a specific supply must, however, always be verified according to the individual article, lot, and transaction.

Should a Buyer Request a Transaction Certificate?

When GRS certification is an essential purchasing requirement, it is not enough to see a logo or read the word "GRS" in a catalogue.

The buyer should verify the documentation available for that specific supply and, where applicable, the relevant Transaction Certificate (TC).

The Transaction Certificate is particularly important because it links certification to a specific transaction and to the products or materials concerned.

For this reason, we always recommend that professional customers specify before placing an order whether GRS documentation is a mandatory requirement for their project.

This makes it possible to verify in advance exactly what documentation can be provided for that particular production.

Recycled Does Not Automatically Mean Certified

Another important distinction is between recycled and GRS certified.

A yarn can genuinely be produced using recycled cashmere without necessarily being accompanied by GRS certification.

Likewise, the presence of a certified company within the supply chain does not automatically allow every subsequent company to declare its finished products as certified.

For a professional buyer, therefore, the right question should not simply be:

"Is it recycled cashmere?"

but also:

"What is the origin of the material? Who carries out the production? Which part of the supply chain is certified? What documentation is available for this specific supply?"

These questions provide much more useful information than simply seeing an acronym on a product specification sheet.

What Should a Buyer Check Before Purchasing Recycled Cashmere?

Before placing a professional order, we recommend checking at least the following:

• actual yarn composition;
• metric yarn count (Nm);
• origin and type of recycled material;
• technical characteristics of the yarn;
• available colours;
• available quantities or production MOQ;
• recommended end use;
• recommended machine gauge;
• identity of the GRS-certified operator;
• availability of documentation relating to the specific supply;
• Transaction Certificate, where required for the project.

It is also particularly important to test the yarn on your own machinery and with your own production process before starting a significant production run.

Due to the nature of recovered fibres, recycled cashmere can behave differently during manufacturing compared with virgin cashmere yarn.

Hircus Filati: Recycled Cashmere Produced in Prato

For Hircus Filati, recycled cashmere is not simply another commercial product category.

It is closely connected to the history and expertise of the textile district in which we operate.

We commission the production of our recycled cashmere to a specialised GRS-certified partner in Prato, selecting the characteristics of the yarns we want to offer our customers.

Our aim is to provide knitwear manufacturers, designers, workshops, brands, and textile professionals with yarns that can be effectively used in production, accompanied by clear technical information and accurate communication regarding their origin and certification.

Because for a professional buyer, sustainability should not simply be a word.

It should primarily mean traceability, product knowledge, and supply-chain transparency.