State-of-the-art upgrade

Among these, the yarn and spinning mills business of knitwear manufacturer Cleckheaton, long-established in Shepparton and regarded as the “foundation stone of one of Australia’s largest yarn-spinning operations”, had by May 1969 completed a substantive $250,000 modernisation program, the latest in a $1.25 million expansion over five years.

The move, said to make the facility “equal to the best in the world” using the latest “two-for-one” German twisting machinery (so-called because they gave two turns of twist to each revolution of the spindle) enabled Cleckheaton to produce as much yarn in two weeks as it took in one year when the company landed in Shepparton in 1949.

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