Icebreaker - Pure Merino

Quite simply, because nature is better than plastic.

We know you care about where the things you buy come from, want to know about the ethical commitment of the companies you buy from, and what impact your purchases will have on the planet. That’s why we’re committed to a sustainable business model that doesn’t put profits ahead of the environment.

Each year, sheep in New Zealand’s Southern Alps grow thick merino wool, and each spring the coat is shorn. From this fibre, Icebreaker creates beautiful merino clothing. Our merino clothing combines the best qualities of traditional wool, synthetics and cotton. It’s soft and non-itch, it’s warm in the cold and cool in the heat, it breathes to prevent clamminess, and it has a miraculous ability to warn off stinkiness – you can run a marathon and still smell as sweet as if you’ve spent the day on the sofa.

And because it was made in the mountains, rather than a lab, merino wool is renewable, recyclable and biodegradable. Plus, your unique Baacode will let you trace the merino fibre from your Icebreaker garment back to its source. You can see the living conditions of the high country sheep that produced the wool, meet the farmers who are custodians of this astonishing landscape, and follow every step of the supply chain.

So along with The Nature Conservancy we’re celebrating the second year of Green Gift Monday! And encouraging you to give green this holiday season with responsible, meaningful holiday gifts.

Green Gift Monday coincides with Cyber Monday, November 28, the biggest online shopping day of the year.

Just thought I’d update you on what’s going on at Mt Nicholas at the moment. We are currently in the midst of shearing – we shear the merinos once a year, starting with the ewes (the female sheep). The reason we start with the girls is that they will be having their lambs in early October and we need to get their fleeces off before then. There are several reasons for this, one of the main ones being that once they have their fleece off they are more aware of the temperature and will take their lambs to shelter when it’s cold or stormy.

As we shear the ewes when it’s still quite cool at night we use a special comb on the shearing machine called a ‘cover comb’ or snow comb’ this lifts the shearing machine off the skin and leaves a thin layer of wool on the sheep for warmth (much like they are still wearing their icebreaker base layer!) so they don’t get too chilly.

Shearing is a great time of year as we get to see the results of all the year’s work in looking after the sheep in the quality of the fleeces that they are producing, I’m pleased to report that the wool’s looking great so we’ll have plenty to send on to Icebreaker! I’ve included some photos of just before the sheep are shorn, during shearing in the shed and after shearing with them just wearing their base layer!

- Kate Cocks, Mt Nicholas Station, New Zealand

We’ve just had a really cold patch of weather here in NZ and wondered how the merinos were coping, so we asked one of our growers at Mt Nicholas high country station near Queenstown. This was the response we got from Kate Cocks along with some amazing images…

Thanks for your email regarding how the merinos are doing through this cold patch of weather, generally at this time of year we do have the sheep on the lower altitude areas of the station due to the likelihood of snow, however this snow was a lot lower and deeper than the usual. My father Robert who’s been on the station 35 years described it as about a one in 15 years snow which gives you an idea of how much there was.

Mostly the sheep have done well. At this time of year they have close to a full fleece of wool on, which keeps them warm, the main issue is them being able to find food in the snow. For those that aren’t in very deep snow, up to about 30cm, they will dig down with their hooves to find food and they will also seek out native shrubs and scrub to use for shelter, eating what’s underneath and not covered in snow.

Some of the ones in deeper snow are more of a challenge, we had sheep in up to a metre of snow which is basically head height on a sheep, so not so good. We did a combination of flying hay to them via helicopter until we could get them out, walking in and tramping tracks down for them to follow us to lower altitude.

For about 250 of the worst stuck ones we had to get a bit inventive and swung a cage under a Squirrel Helicopter. We flew them out in lots of 12-15, to do this we had 4 people loading them into the cages at the top and 2 of us unloading at the bottom, there were some pretty dazed and confused sheep emerging from the cage at the bottom, but all looked pretty happy to no longer be buried in snow!

I’ve included a couple of photos for you of flying them out.