David Nieper to open UK jersey printing plant

By

Sandra Halliday

Published
Jul 10, 2018

Luxury clothing brand David Nieper is investing £3 million to roll out the UK’s first digital printing plant for jersey fabric, which will be open for collaboration with designers and producers.

The high-tech hub opening later this year will expand the brand’s textile capabilities whilst also giving the shrinking UK textile manufacturing sector a helping hand, according to an interview with the Daily Express.

“This move will create jobs and sustainability,” Christopher Nieper told the newspaper. He is the managing director of the textile brand, whose UK made designs generated almost £18 million last year.

Today, the business produces eight collections each spring and autumn, including luxury knitwear, womenswear and nightwear. The new hub will help it develop new designs in jersey fabric.

“It needs machinery and special skills to work on jersey because of its stretch,” Nieper explains. “British-made now has a value we could have only dreamt of a few years ago.”

The company has been investing heavily in moving its knitwear manufacturing, marketing and other operations in-house over the last years. In 2011, it paid £400,000 for its own knitting machines and in 2013 it invested £1.3million to produce its own catalogues.

In 2016 it opened a brand new 12,000 sq ft garment cutting factory and this year, David Nieper became the first ever British fashion manufacturer to break into Britain’s prestigious ‘Best 100 Companies to Work For’ list published by The Sunday Times.

Additionally, in the last two years the business has sponsored the local secondary school to help raise the level of education and skills in the area, in a bid to reduce the industry’s shrinking workforce.