Hemp yarn is yarn spun from the bast fibre of the hemp plant, Cannabis sativa. It is made in two main ways. The traditional route retts the stems, scutches and hackles out the long fibre and spins it on flax (linen) machinery, mostly wet: the roving is soaked in hot water so it can be drawn out finer. This gives the best hemp yarn, strong and even, and European spinners list fine hemp yarns in metric counts from about Nm 9.5 to Nm 52. The newer route “cottonises” the fibre, cutting and opening it into a cotton-like staple that runs on cotton cards, ring frames and rotors, usually blended with cotton. That route is faster and cheaper in volume, but its yarn is less even and weaker than long-fibre yarn, and in one machine maker’s trials a 50/50 hemp-cotton blend could not be spun finer than Nm 24. The short tow left over from scutching and hackling is dry-spun into thick, rustic yarns of Nm 2.6 to 6, which spinners list for fashion and home weaving. Hemp yarn goes into shirting and clothing, upholstery and household textiles, cordage, and low-twist rovings for composites.
Last verified: 17 October 2026. Counts are the ones spinners list for their own yarns, converted with the site’s count converter; trial results are as the machine maker reported them. Sources are linked where each fact appears and listed at the end.
Hemp yarn at a glance
| Yarn | Fibre fed | Machinery | Counts offered by spinners | Typical uses |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Wet-spun long-fibre hemp | Hackled long line fibre from retted stems | Flax (linen) system: hackling, drawing, roving, wet spinning frame | Nm 9.5–20 (Safilin); bleached Nm 26, 39 and 52 (Linificio, spinning method not stated) | Shirting, clothing and household fabrics |
| Dry-spun tow hemp | Scutched or hackled tow | Flax system, spun without the water bath | Nm 2.6, 4.2 and 6 (Safilin); Nm 2.6 and 4.8 (Lambrecht) | Fashion and home weaving (spinners’ listings); furniture fabrics and cord (Alliance) |
| Cottonised hemp, pure or blended | Hemp cut and opened to a staple of about 41 mm | Cotton system: card, draw frame, ring or rotor spinning | In trials, 50/50 with cotton no finer than Nm 24; 90% hemp no finer than Nm 10 | Lower-cost hemp and hemp-blend textiles |
| Woollen-system hemp | “Woollenised” hemp mixed with wool | Woollen spinning system | Not published | Hemp-wool yarns |
| Low-twist hemp roving | Long-fibre hemp | Process not stated | 400 tex (Nm 2.5) and 200 tex (Nm 5) (Safilin) | Reinforcement for composite parts |
Sources: spinners’ listings for Safilin natural wet-spun, Safilin bleached wet-spun, Safilin dry-spun tow, Lambrecht (Nm 2.6, Nm 4.8) and Safilin roving on the Alliance for European Flax-Linen and Hemp’s sourcing platform, and Linificio e Canapificio Nazionale; spinning systems from Zimniewska (2022); cottonised staple and blend limits from the Bremen Cotton Exchange’s report of Trützschler’s trials.
How hemp yarn is made, from stem to cone
Hemp fibre processing for yarn follows the flax route, step for step. The fibre lies in bundles under the skin of the stem, glued to each other and to the woody core by pectin, so it has to be freed before it can be spun. How that is done, and how hemp’s fibre compares with flax, jute and ramie, is set out on the site’s bast fibres page; the steps that matter for the yarn are these.
- Harvest. In Europe hemp is cut by machine, dried in swathes on the field for a few weeks, then pressed and baled; fibre yield averages about 15% (PROTA, PROTA, hemp).
- Retting. Microbes in the field (dew retting) or in tanks of water digest the pectin so the fibre parts from the core. Retted fibre is what the linen system needs, and water-retted fibre has the best fineness and spinnability (Zimniewska, 2022).
- Cutting and scutching. Fibre hemp stems reach 1.3–3 m in central Russian types and 2.5–4.5 m in Mediterranean ones (PROTA), so for the linen system the dry, retted stems are cut to 0.8–1 m and scutched: rollers break the woody core and beaters knock it out. Scutching gives two products, tresses of long fibre and a mass of short tow (Zimniewska).
- Hackling. The long fibre is combed through finer and finer pins. What survives is clean, parallel line fibre; what is combed out is hackled tow. The hackling machine is used only for flax and hemp (Zimniewska).
- Drawing and roving. The clean hackled fibre is drawn and mixed into parallel slivers, and the slivers are made into roving. The roving can be bleached before spinning or spun raw (“grey”).
- Spinning. The roving is drafted and twisted into yarn on a wet or a dry spinning frame (the next section).
- Winding. The yarn is wound onto cones for weaving; Safilin ships its hemp weaving yarns on 1.7 kg cones and its tow yarns on 2.9 kg cones (sourcing-platform listings above).
How much yarn a tonne of straw gives. By Zimniewska’s figure, a tonne of raw hemp straw yields roughly 70–80 kg of fine yarn from long fibre. The rest is tow, which still becomes coarser yarn, and the woody core, which PROTA lists as animal bedding or fuel. Zimniewska expects the best long-fibre yarn to stay in premium clothing at high prices because it costs so much to produce.
The decortication route. To avoid retting, hemp can be decorticated: unretted stems are crushed and the fibre is separated mechanically. The fibre comes out in one length, in tangled bundles with pieces of stem still attached, which suits technical uses but not fine yarn. To make it spinnable it is either retted before decortication or degummed after it, then carded and shortened for the cotton or wool system (Zimniewska). Both of Zimniewska’s cotton-system routes (her Figure 18 B and D) start from decorticated fibre, though hackled tow from the linen route can be cottonised too.
Hemp yarn types: wet-spun, dry-spun and cottonised
PROTA’s handbook entry puts it plainly: hemp yarn is mainly made by wet spinning of the long fibres, and cottonisation makes it possible to process hemp on cotton spinning machines (PROTA, hemp). Zimniewska’s review lists four routes in use: the traditional flax system, the cotton system after retting and decortication, the cotton system after decortication and degumming, and the wool system. Each gives a different yarn.
Wet-spun hemp yarn
In wet spinning the fibre is soaked in hot water as it is spun. The Alliance for European Flax-Linen and Hemp describes the water as heated to 60 °C and says it “promotes the gliding of the fibres” (Alliance); the French spinner Safilin soaks its sliver in water at about 70 °C “to make it more flexible and thus enable the production of finer yarns” (Safilin). Both describe flax, and the same frames spin hemp. Zimniewska calls the wet spinning frame “markedly different” from the machines of other systems and the linen route the most suitable for hemp yarn for clothing. Wet-spun long-fibre hemp is the even, strong yarn (Safilin calls its own “strong and even”): Safilin sells it natural in Nm 9.5, 10, 12 and 15 and bleached in Nm 10, 13.5, 16.5 and 20. Linificio e Canapificio Nazionale, which says it is the only mill in Italy spinning hemp for high-end yarns, offers bleached hemp in Nm 26, 39 and 52 for “high-end clothing, shirting, and accessories fabrics” (Linificio); its page does not say how they are spun.
Dry-spun and tow yarns
Dry spinning leaves out the water bath and makes a thicker, more rustic yarn, used for furnishing fabrics and cord (Alliance; Safilin). Most dry-spun hemp is spun from tow, the short fibre left by scutching and hackling: scutched or hackled tow goes into yarns of higher linear density, and hackled tow can be spun wet or dry (Zimniewska). The counts show it. Safilin’s combed hemp tow yarn, described as “durable and slubbed”, comes in Nm 2.6, 4.2 and 6 and is listed for fashion weaving in its spring/summer range; the Polish spinner Lambrecht lists Nm 2.6 and Nm 4.8 yarns “spun from hackle short fiber” for home textiles (listings above). Dry-spun yarn in general goes into furniture fabrics and cord (Alliance).
Cottonised hemp on the cotton system
The flax system’s weak point is its machinery: the hackling machines and wet spinning frames it needs “have not been produced for several decades and are difficult to find on the market” (Zimniewska), and its productivity is low. Cottonising gets round it. The fibre is cut and opened, mechanically in Trützschler’s line, by bale openers, separators for heavy particles, cleaners and dedicated cottonisation cards, into a staple that a cotton mill can run. In Trützschler’s figures, reported by the Bremen Cotton Exchange, cottonised hemp averaged 41 mm in length, with the longest quarter averaging 49 mm, and a micronaire of 7.3 (Bremen Cotton Exchange, 2024). That staple is carded and spun on ring or rotor frames, as pure hemp or blended with cotton or other cotton-like fibres (Zimniewska).
The trade-off is quality. Zimniewska concludes that yarn from cottonised hemp is less even and less strong than yarn from long fibre, because the fibre lengths vary so widely, and that cottonising costs hemp much of what makes it distinctive: high strength, a cool touch, resistance to pilling. In return, fabrics of cottonised hemp can crease less, and the cotton system’s output is “much higher”, provided the cottonising is done accurately. She judges adapting the cotton system the most feasible way for hemp yarn production to grow, with long-fibre yarn kept for premium clothing.
Hemp on the woollen system
Fibre opened to a wool-like length can be mixed with wool and spun on the woollen system (Zimniewska). No spinner listing found for this page gives counts for such yarns, so none are quoted here.
Cotton-hemp spinning: what the trials show
The most detailed public figures on spinning hemp with cotton come from trials presented by Ralf Müller of the machine maker Trützschler at the International Cotton Conference Bremen in March 2024, as summarised by the Bremen Cotton Exchange. They are one maker’s results, on its own preparation line, with ring-spun yarn; treat them as a guide to the direction of each effect rather than a specification.
| Finding | Figure reported |
|---|---|
| Blends produced | 30% to 70% hemp with cotton; also hemp with lyocell |
| 100% hemp | Not possible, because of breakage |
| Finest yarn, 50/50 hemp/cotton | Nm 24 (41.67 tex, Ne 14.17) |
| Finest yarn, 90% hemp | Nm 10 (100 tex, Ne 5.91) |
| Imperfection index (IPI), Ne 6 singles | About 600 at 30/70 hemp/cotton, 1,700 at 50/50, 1,900 at 75/25 |
| IPI, Ne 14 singles | 1,400 at 30/70, rising to 4,800 at 75/25 |
| Tenacity | Rose with the hemp share at each count, with cotton and with lyocell |
| Handling | Hemp is brittle and builds static, causing jamming, clogging and ends down; countered by raising fibre moisture to 14–15% and treating the fibre with avivage |
Source: Bremen Cotton Exchange, “Cotton and Hemp Fibres – Possibilities for Joint Processing”, 28 June 2024. The tex and Ne equivalents are this page’s conversions. IPI is the sum of thin places (−50%), thick places (+50%) and neps (+200%) per kilometre.
Two things follow for anyone planning a hemp-cotton yarn. More hemp makes the yarn stronger but much less even, and the evenness penalty is steeper in finer yarns: at Ne 14 the imperfection count more than tripled between 30% and 75% hemp. And the hemp share caps how fine you can go, so a fine shirting count is a low-hemp or long-fibre yarn, not a high-hemp cottonised one.
Worked example: setting a 50/50 hemp-cotton blend at the draw frame
A cotton mill can make the blend in the blowroom or at the draw frame (how each works is on the site’s fibre blending page). At the draw frame the blend is set by the number of slivers of each fibre in the creel and their weights. Suppose the creel holds 4 ends of cottonised hemp sliver at 5.0 ktex (5.0 g per metre) and 4 ends of cotton sliver at 4.8 ktex, drawn to one 5.0 ktex sliver.
| Step | Working | Result |
|---|---|---|
| Hemp entering per metre | 4 × 5.0 | 20.0 g |
| Cotton entering per metre | 4 × 4.8 | 19.2 g |
| Hemp share by mass | 20.0 ÷ 39.2 × 100 | 51.02%, 1.02 points over a 50% target |
| Hemp sliver weight that gives exactly 50% | target × cotton mass ÷ ((100 − target) × hemp ends) = 50 × 19.2 ÷ (50 × 4) | 4.80 ktex |
| If one hemp end breaks unnoticed | 15.0 ÷ 34.2 × 100 | 43.86%, a shift of 7.16 points |
| Draft | 39.2 ÷ 5.0 | 7.84 |
Eight ends make each end worth 12.5% of the creel, so the blend can only be trimmed by sliver weight, and a single broken hemp end shifts a 50/50 yarn by about 7 points. Run it in the draw frame blend calculator, set to this example, then check the delivered blend in the lab by the chemical analysis of ISO 1833-1, since a dyed fabric is too late to find out.
Hemp yarn counts
Hemp spinners in Europe quote the metric count, Nm: the number of kilometres of yarn in one kilogram, so a higher number is a finer yarn (Alliance). Tex, the international direct count of ISO 1144, is grams per 1000 metres, so tex = 1000 ÷ Nm; cotton mills working with cottonised hemp quote the English count Ne, and Ne = 0.5905 × Nm. The table converts every count the three spinners list for their hemp yarns.
| Hemp yarn (spinner) | Nm | tex | Ne | Metres in a kilogram |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Long-fibre roving for composites (Safilin) | 2.5 | 400.00 | 1.48 | 2,500 |
| Dry-spun combed tow, ecru (Safilin); hackled tow (Lambrecht) | 2.6 | 384.62 | 1.54 | 2,600 |
| Dry-spun combed tow, ecru (Safilin) | 4.2 | 238.10 | 2.48 | 4,200 |
| Dry-spun hackled tow (Lambrecht) | 4.8 | 208.33 | 2.83 | 4,800 |
| Long-fibre roving for composites (Safilin) | 5 | 200.00 | 2.95 | 5,000 |
| Dry-spun combed tow, ecru (Safilin); natural (Linificio) | 6 | 166.67 | 3.54 | 6,000 |
| Wet-spun long fibre, natural (Safilin) | 9.5 | 105.26 | 5.61 | 9,500 |
| Wet-spun long fibre, natural and bleached (Safilin); boiled (Linificio) | 10 | 100.00 | 5.91 | 10,000 |
| Wet-spun long fibre, natural (Safilin) | 12 | 83.33 | 7.09 | 12,000 |
| Wet-spun long fibre, bleached (Safilin) | 13.5 | 74.07 | 7.97 | 13,500 |
| Boiled (Linificio) | 14 | 71.43 | 8.27 | 14,000 |
| Wet-spun long fibre, natural (Safilin) | 15 | 66.67 | 8.86 | 15,000 |
| Wet-spun long fibre, bleached (Safilin) | 16.5 | 60.61 | 9.74 | 16,500 |
| Wet-spun long fibre, bleached (Safilin) | 20 | 50.00 | 11.81 | 20,000 |
| Boiled (Linificio) | 24 | 41.67 | 14.17 | 24,000 |
| Bleached, for shirting (Linificio) | 26 | 38.46 | 15.35 | 26,000 |
| Bleached, for shirting (Linificio) | 39 | 25.64 | 23.03 | 39,000 |
| Bleached, for shirting (Linificio) | 52 | 19.23 | 30.71 | 52,000 |
Reading the table. The finest hemp yarn listed, Linificio’s Nm 52, is about the weight of a 30s cotton (Ne 30.71). The heaviest tow yarn, Nm 2.6, is twenty times heavier. The span is the point: “hemp yarn” covers everything from a shirting yarn to a cord, and the count tells you which you are buying. Any count converts in the yarn count converter, set to Nm 26, which shows 38.46 tex, Ne 15.35 and 346.15 denier for that yarn. For plied yarn, divide the singles count by the number of plies: two ends of Nm 26 twisted together make Nm 13 (76.9 tex) before allowing for twist contraction. Count is measured by weighing skeins of known length after conditioning (ISO 2060, ISO 139); the formulas behind every count system are on the spinning formulas page.
What hemp yarn is used for
- Clothing and shirting. Fine bleached yarns. Linificio sells its Nm 26–52 for clothing, shirting and accessory fabrics, in plain colours, délavé and mélange.
- Hemp yarn for weaving household and furnishing fabrics. Safilin lists its wet-spun hemp for both fashion and home weaving; Linificio sells “boiled” Nm 10, 14 and 24 for upholstery, home furnishing, clothing and accessories such as bags and wallets, and a natural Nm 6.
- Blends. Cottonised hemp is blended with cotton, lyocell or other cotton-like fibres on the cotton system, and wool-like hemp with wool (Zimniewska; Bremen Cotton Exchange). Blended fabrics in general, and why fibres are combined, are covered on the blended fabrics page.
- Twine, rope and nets. The traditional uses of hemp bast fibre, alongside yarn and paper (PROTA).
- Composites. Low-twist long-fibre hemp roving, 200 or 400 tex, for weaving into reinforcements or for infusion, resin transfer moulding, compression moulding and pultrusion (Safilin roving listing).
Why good hemp yarn is scarce
Zimniewska calls spinning “the bottle neck for the hemp textile value chain”. Hemp fibre and tow production was 60,000 tonnes in 2019, 1.7% of natural fibres and 0.05% of all textile fibres, so machine makers have little reason to build hackling machines or wet spinning frames for it, and the traditional equipment still in use is slow. PROTA’s entry adds that the hemp fibre and yarn on the market rarely meet the textile industry’s requirements for fibre fineness, homogeneity, flexibility and length distribution, and that bast fibre has to be kept parallel through processing so it does not tangle, which adds to the cost. On the cotton system the problems are different: brittle fibre, static, ends down, and the evenness losses in the trial table above. Hemp also tends to cost more than cotton, and the retting or degumming and the bleaching have environmental costs of their own (Bremen Cotton Exchange).
Testing hemp yarn
Hemp yarn is tested by the general yarn methods, after conditioning in the standard atmosphere of ISO 139: linear density (count) by the skein method of ISO 2060 or ASTM D1907, twist by ISO 2061, single-end breaking force and elongation by ISO 2062, and, for a blend, fibre composition by the chemical analysis of ISO 1833.
Questions
What is hemp yarn?
Yarn spun from the bast fibre in the stems of the hemp plant, Cannabis sativa, either alone or blended with cotton, wool or other fibres. The best is wet-spun from long hackled fibre on flax machinery; coarser grades are dry-spun from tow, and cottonised hemp is spun on cotton machinery. Spinners sell it in metric counts from about Nm 2.6 for heavy tow yarn to Nm 52 for shirting.
Is hemp yarn soft enough for clothing?
The fine grades are: Linificio sells its bleached Nm 26 and finer for high-end clothing and shirting, Safilin lists its wet-spun Nm 9.5–20 for fashion as well as home weaving, and Zimniewska counts a cool touch and resistance to pilling among the properties hemp keeps in long-fibre yarn and loses when it is cottonised. The coarse dry-spun tow yarns, Nm 2.6 to 6, are slubbed and rustic; Safilin lists its tow yarn for fashion weaving and Lambrecht its tow yarns for home textiles. Cottonised hemp blended with cotton is the other route into clothing, though cottonising costs hemp some of its strength and its cool touch (Zimniewska).
How is hemp yarn made?
The stems are harvested and retted to loosen the fibre, cut and scutched to knock out the woody core, and hackled to comb out clean long fibre. The long fibre is drawn into sliver and roving and spun, usually wet, on flax machinery; the tow is spun dry into thicker yarn. Alternatively the fibre is decorticated, cleaned and cottonised, then carded and spun on cotton ring or rotor frames.
What is cottonised hemp?
Hemp fibre that has been cut, opened and cleaned to a cotton-like staple so it can run on cotton spinning machinery. In Trützschler’s trials it averaged 41 mm long with a micronaire of 7.3. It is cheaper to spin in volume than long-fibre hemp, but the yarn is less even and weaker.
Can hemp be spun with cotton?
Yes, once it is cottonised. Trützschler spun blends from 30% to 70% hemp with cotton, but not 100% hemp, which broke. The more hemp, the stronger and less even the yarn, and the coarser the finest count possible: Nm 24 at 50/50, Nm 10 at 90% hemp.
Is hemp yarn the same as linen yarn?
No. Linen yarn is spun from flax, a different plant, though the two are spun on the same machinery by the same wet and dry methods, and several European spinners make both. How flax becomes linen is on the site’s flax and linen page, and hemp as a fibre on the hemp fibre page.
Sources
- Review: M. Zimniewska, Hemp Fibre Properties and Processing Target Textile: A Review, Materials 15(5) (2022) 1901, sections 3 to 6 (open access, also on PubMed Central).
- Handbook: P. C. M. Jansen, Cannabis sativa L., PROTA (Plant Resources of Tropical Africa), 2006.
- Trials: Bremen Cotton Exchange, Cotton and Hemp Fibres – Possibilities for Joint Processing, 28 June 2024, reporting Trützschler’s presentation at the International Cotton Conference Bremen 2024.
- Spinning methods: Alliance for European Flax-Linen and Hemp, flax growing and processing (steps 8, spinning, and the metric count); Safilin, stages from fibre to flax yarn.
- Yarns on the market: Alliance sourcing platform listings for Safilin (wet-spun natural, wet-spun bleached, dry-spun combed tow, low-twist roving) and Lambrecht (Nm 2.6, Nm 4.8); Linificio e Canapificio Nazionale, hemp yarns.
- Standards: the site’s records for ISO 1144, ISO 2060, ASTM D1907, ISO 2061, ISO 2062, ISO 1833 and ISO 139.
How this page is kept
Last verified: 17 October 2026. The spinning routes and the yield from straw come from Zimniewska’s 2022 review and the PROTA handbook entry; the cottonised staple, blend limits and imperfection figures are Trützschler’s trial results as the Bremen Cotton Exchange reported them; the counts are those Safilin, Lambrecht and Linificio list for their own yarns on this date, and they change as spinners change their ranges. Count conversions and the blend example were run in the site’s count converter and draw frame blend calculator as they stood on this date, and both prefilled links were opened to check that they show the figures quoted. Spotted an error? Tell us through the contact page and it will be corrected.
