The fabric designs are either done in house or more commonly by the fabulously clever and creative Greta Menzies.  

COTTON YARN

We have chosen to purchase Fairtrade Certified Organic Cotton yarn for our bulk production to ensure that our fabric suppliers abide by the strict protocols required to achieve the certifications incorporating the International Labour Laws
and Ethical Trading Initiative base code.

This has an enormous social impact on those growers and workers in India where our yarn comes from, alongside minimising the ecological issues around cotton growing and production. You can read all about Fairtrade cotton standards here. We use Global Organic Textile Standard (GOTS) certified cotton. Grown without the use of any synthetic chemicals such as fertilisers or pesticides and never uses GMO seeds, azo dyes, heavy metals, formaldehyde or chlorine.

 All the yarn for our cotton fabrics come from Vardhman textiles Chandigarh Road, Ludhiana, Punjab-141010, India. We don't deal directly with this supplier. This is a very large organisation with 10,000+ employees with strict protocols around HR, sustainability and women’s support, plus education for farmers and workers, building schools and being involved in the community that their workers and growers live in. They are members of the Better Cotton Initiative. We have not visited Vardhman, but would love to do so!

KNITTING AND DYING

The cotton yarn and lycra are knitted together and dyed if required at ABMT textiles, 100-128 Ferris Road, Melton, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia to create our unique fabric.

The people at ABMT (60 employees) are passionate about their work and have the ability to produce quality products while addressing the issues of environment, sustainability and social responsibility alongside developing innovative new products with increased life expectancy.

They have their own settling ponds and recycle 85% of their water plus they separate the dye solids which are composted.

 They have many certifications including processing organically grown and milled cotton and as they are an Australian company they are governed by the Australian labour laws. ABMT employees are well represented by the Australian Textile and Footwear Union, and the facility is audited socially by Ethical Clothing Australia (ECA) and  Fairtrade annually. We have visited this factory, which is amazing, and enjoy a very open and transparent relationship with the company.

PRINTING 

Once the fabric arrives in New Zealand it heads straight to Paul at Auckland Fabric Printers (AFP), Dock 8, 21 Lovegrove Crescent, Auckland - these guys cover all our continuous fabric printing requirements. AFP use only water based inks (colourtrend liquid pigments) for Thunderpants and do not use any printing techniques that use non environmentally friendly products. AFP is owner operated with one or two employees as required. As it is an NZ company it is governed by NZ health and safety and employment laws. We have visited this factory often and love to do so. They are the last of their kind in NZ so we are very keen to continue to support them.

BINDING CUTTING

General Products strip cut our fabric bindings and send them to our manufacturers. They have 10 employees and the directors also work in the company alongside their staff. Everyone earns above minimum wage and are covered by NZ work, health and safety standards.

We have not visited General products but email and speak on the phone regularly. One day we will go and say hello.

COMPONENTS

Webbing and Tapes supply us with our knitted, branded, boxer elastic. They are the only company left in New Zealand that does this. We buy around 4000m a year so we are very small players. They import their yarn through Bruce Smith Agencies based in Auckland who imports the yarn from Asia Fibre. We have spoken with the guys at Bruce Smith who have visited the factory in Thailand and they were very positive about the factory and the conditions for the workers. Asia Fibre are a very large organisation and they have a lot of certifications around CO2 emissions, harmful substances, CSR and more.

The rubber in the elastic comes from Rubberflex a Malaysian based company who supply Webbing and Tapes.They have some certifications on their website around harmful substances and other things but nothing around CSR so we are picking it is is not high on their list. Natural rubber is exactly that, naturally occurring, it is biodegradable but can take up to 50 years to degrade. Luckily we use very little.

Cordall supply us with some cotton tapes and bra elastics used in a few styles occasionally. They also import their yarn through Bruce Smith Agencies based in Auckland who imports the yarn from Saif Textiles and also Vardhman. Both of these are massive international corporations with strict codes of conduct and independently audited certifications. 

Patersons labels supply us with all our garment labels. They are based in Auckland and Christchurch and are one of the few NZ based label printers left in the country. As it is a New Zealand company it is governed by NZ health and safety and employment laws. We understand they often sub-contract work and sometimes to Asia for our printed sew in labels of which we order approximately 50,000 units each year which equates to an account of around $4000 a year. Our care labels they print in NZ. We hope to find a more transparent source of organic cotton printed labels in the future - we are constantly looking.

ZIPS

We use zips very occasionally and when we do we opt for the YKK recycled version where we can.

MANUFACTURING

Finally all the fabric and components arrive at our manufacturers, SS clothing, Carterton who are 20 minutes up the road from us. They work 8am - 3pm, five days a week and only sew for Thunderpants. We have been working with this crew for 23 years. We pay them a set price per garment and that price is periodically increased to keep in line with their rising costs. The workers stay with them for many years. There are four FTE at SS clothing. Everyone at SS clothing earns a living wage.

These highly skilled ladies are masters at making Thunderpants and take great pride in the quality of their work checking regularly that they are meeting the criteria that makes sure the unique design works.SS clothing use Coats thread for sewing.

PACKAGING

Lamb Peters Print in Greytown is 10 minutes up the road and prints all our packaging and promotional requirements. We use unbleached brown card and water based black ink for our packaging and keep all printed promotional stuff to an absolute minimum.

 As it is a NZ company it is governed by NZ health and safety and employment laws. It does send some of our work out to other NZ based printers also working under NZ law. Lamb Peters employs around four staff and do a lot of free printing for the community.

Being a mail order business it was very important for us to find an alternative to plastic to send our orders.After many years of searching for a suitable option we have settled on Eco-Enclose, a USA based company that makes 100% recycled naturally biodegradable brown card mailers. We bring them in by the pallet load as there is no viable NZ based option for ethical packing for mailers.

BEDDING

All our bedding is produced by RCM Organic in India as part of the Chetna Project with Chetna Organic. We chose RCM as they only deal in organics so it is at the heart of the company.

All the bedding is Fairtrade certified organic cotton in 300 thread count and the items are made from start to finished packaged product by RCM.

COTTON DRILL

We purchase our Fairtrade certified organic cotton drill from RCM organic where the bedding comes from. It is then printed as required in Auckland at AFP and then sewn in our workroom by Ngaire.

NON FAIRTRADE COTTON 

Occasionally we have 100% organic cotton products (non fairtrade) and do sometimes sample in this way as well. However as soon as the volume permits we ask our supplier to offer a Fairtrade option.

Supporting NZ manufacturers and suppliers

As we are based in New Zealand we need to weigh up the benefits of NZ based manufacturing and suppliers over the potentially more financially viable overseas options. There are many ethical clothing brands that follow the “seed to garment “ process doing the whole thing in a factory based in India as we do for our bedding range. 

However, New Zealand has a diminishing manufacturing sector and we wish to support NZ manufacturing while we are able. For this reason we have chosen to continue making Thunderpants in NZ (along with the added bonus of being able to keep a closer eye on ongoing quality) and also to utilise the suppliers we have left here. We consider this is super important as every factory or plant closure sees further skilled workers unable to use their skills in the field of textiles. Our knowledge base is shrinking and our supplier options diminished. This is especially critical to start ups and small operators who are unlikely to have the funds for the minimums and processes involved in manufacturing and sourcing offshore.