Monterey sliver knit producer has set aside $250 million for future expansion plan

Monterey Mills is an industry leader in the American sliver knit fabric industry and the premier supplier of paint roller fabric. It offers a broad range of fabrics for industrial applications including paint rollers, air & water filtration, medical grade fabrics, buffing pads and more. Monterey Mills has earmarked $250,000 to invest for Glenoit Fabrics in Tarboro, NC to gain a greater share of the growing sliver knitting industry.

The Tarboro plant is one of only a handful of sliver knitting mills that remain in the US. Sliver knitting, or high-pile knitting, is a process that locks individual fibres into a lightweight knit backing. Such fabrics are used in a number of different products, from fleeces and saddle pads to the fabric for mascots and stuffed animals.

Earlier last year Monterey Mills has won the William Cordes Innovation Award by the American Brush Manufacturers Association (ABMA) for its sliver knitted innovation, which is creating strong interest with leading paint roller manufacturers.

Monterey’s product is a novel way to provide fabric for paint rollers, which provides fabric in a sock form, rather than supplying fabric which is slit to the desired width and helically wound around a core to make a paint roller. The tube is close in size to a paint roller and is said to provide numerous benefits compared to traditional fabric covered rollers.

Fabric costs are said to be dramatically lower as the tubular technology eliminates several finishing processes in manufacturing the fabric and the core materials used are less expensive than those traditionally used as well as being 100% recyclable.

Monterey also supplies apparel fabric for use as winter weather apparel liners and as coats and jackets.

The mill currently employees 50 people at the plant and they hope to double that within a year.