William Clark & Sons have been providing world class linen direct from Northern Ireland to customers around the world for nearly 300 years. The Company is the only supplier in the world that can produce Beetled linen fabric with that unmistakable sheen. Using the Beetling process the fabric gets pounded for 20 days by wooden hammers on the original beetling engines. This equipment is as reliable today as when they were commissioned over 100 years ago, and the process remains unchanged.
At our old site, where the original company was founded more than 300 years ago, we had limited space suitable for expansion, so we decided to establish a new factory close by.
Amongst other new equipment in the factory a new coating and finishing line including a Bruckner stenter frame was installed. The 6-zone stenter frame with vertical returning pin chain finishes fabric being supplied to different markets, such as apparel fabrics, military uniforms, home furnishing and other technical applications. Being equipped with two bowl pad mangle and multifunctional knife coating unit, many finishing processes are being provided:
– water and stain repellent
– flame retardant padding and back coatings
– stiffening and softening
– abrasion performance
In order to monitor the optimum machine settings and to identify potential waste of energy, the stenter is equipped with a modern recipe management system and also energy counters, providing batch-related energy consumption details. Needless to say, that also the exhaust air settings can also be regulated via reliable sensors into an optimum level in order to avoid unnecessary exhaust air taken out of the machine.
Kevin Devlin, plant manager of William Clark says, that the purchase of a new stenter and coating line was essential to control processing costs and provide the quality and consistency demanded in today’s market. We found Bruckner to be a supportive and reliable partner in this venture and would have no hesitation in working with them again.
