Meet our Team
We invite you to meet our skilled team at Lochcarron. Our people are at the fore of what we do. Across numerous departments and locations throughout Scotland, find out more about the people behind the world's leading manufacturer of tartan today...
Get to Know the Lochcarron Team...
Our skilled dyers meticulously prepare our yarns, transforming them from their ecru state and dyeing them into a wide spectrum of colours. With an extensive archive and experience, they ensure each shade matches the exact colour and yarn sample from the chosen design.
Carefully preparing our yarns for dyeing are our winding operatives. They wind our yarns onto ‘flexible’ cones ready for dyeing, the freshly dyed yarns are then expertly wound onto harder cones to the exact measured length for the warp or weft yarn. They also maintain our yarn store, ensuring everything runs smoothly.
Our authentic tartan patterns start to take shape with the skilled work of our warpers who arrange the vertical threads or warp of the fabric. They draw the yarns from the creel to the drum in the correct sequence for the design, constructing the warp. When complete, the warp is wound off onto a beam ready to be transferred to the loom for weaving.
With our automatic looms are some aspects of innovation, but the traditional process of weaving is still the same as it always has been. Our weavers prepare our looms for weaving and keep an eye on them while they are running, maintaining the looms and repairing any faults.
Every piece of cloth is meticulously inspected by our darners, ensuring our fabrics are of the finest quality. They check the first 30cm of cloth to ensure each thread is in the right sequence and the weave structure is correct throughout. When they have made this check, weaving can continue, with any mistakes corrected. Once woven, our fabrics return to the darning where they are thoroughly inspected for faults, and any imperfections are expertly mended.
Our fabrics are then sent to Schofields in Galashiels, for the finishing process.
Once returned to the mill, our scarves and blankets are checked and cut in our scarf department. Quality control is a crucial part of our process, and our dedicated team ensures all our scarves and blankets meet our high standards. Similar to darning, our team carries out a visual inspection of the accessory, measuring the dimensions, and feeling for any imperfections. Their expertise and attention to detail ensure that every scarf and blanket is perfect.
Our sewing team tailors our much-loved tartan apparel and accessories. A few of our team members are also trained in kilt-making, crafting our hand-sewn traditional kilts using time-honoured techniques.
Our cloth cutters prepare our cut lengths of fabric to be sent out to our customers or for our sewing team to transform into some of our lovely products. Our tartan warehouse is fully stocked with our extensive range of fabrics woven in three different weights, alongside our tweeds and designer cloth lengths. We send out orders across the world with our pickers and packers preparing and packaging your products with care, ready to be shipped to you safely and promptly.