Mechanical Separation
Raw flax straw enters a scutching mill for the mechanical liberation of woody core fragments from the surrounding bast fibre. Wooden blades mounted on a revolving drum strike the dried stalks against a heavy iron or steel grid during this operation. Operators feed handfuls of material continuously through narrow intake slots while overhead suction ducts extract airborne dust and short waste particles known as tow.
Centrifugal force separates the long line fibre from broken shive fragments before the product leaves the beating zone for manual inspection.
Quality Threshold
Commercial grading happens immediately after mechanical processing ends when supervisors assess the cleaned material against established regional benchmarks. Inspectors evaluate length, tensile strength and residual shive content under controlled lighting conditions inside the mill evaluation room. A certified batch certificate accompanies every outgoing bale to record moisture percentage and impurity levels for the spinning plant.
Acceptance criteria agreed between mill management and export buyers dictate the allowable tolerance for broken filaments within each graded lot.
Export Logbook
Production tallies and quality metrics flow directly into the official mill register before bales depart for maritime shipping terminals. Customs officials inspect these archival ledgers to verify compliance with international textile trade regulations governing unprocessed plant products. Mill supervisors sign the final compliance declaration to confirm that moisture thresholds remained within safe limits throughout storage and handling.
Archival retention rules require warehouse managers to preserve these shipping records for a defined regulatory period following customs clearance.
