Preparing for a trip often involves some uncertainties. One of these is about the weather. There’s a saying that goes, “There’s no bad weather. There are only the wrong clothes.” There’s no better way to justify a fashion victim’s reckless spending, and I experienced this firsthand when I packed my suitcase for my latest trip to the Abbeville, in the Somme department, in northeastern France.
The day of travel passed amid heavy downpours, sunny spells, sudden cloud cover, and gusts of wind—the perfect weather conditions for a world apart—that of flax cultivation and processing.
Linen plants are short-lived as their life lasts only 100 days and their light blue delicate flowers last one day only. Despite this, they are very resistant, need little water, no pesticides, and grow free of weeds. They find ideal growing conditions in humid, windy areas and, thanks to the oceanic influence and the alternation of rain and sun, they are uprooted and left on the ground so that the fibers can get alternatively wet, rot thanks to fungi and bacteria, and dry in the sun to produce one of the most prized and unique textile fibers in the world, known since the early days of human history–in the Caucasus in 36,000 BC and later, in 5,000 BC, in Ancient Egypt.
I was able to discover this world–previously unknown to me–by visiting Calira, the Cooperative Agricole Liniere de la Region d’Abbeville, a flax-growing agricultural association comprising 700 farmers who are part of a local cooperative certified according to the criteria of the Alliance for European Flax Linen & Hemp and Master of Flax Fiber.
This region produces the world’s finest flax—long-staple flax—which, together with fibers from Belgium and the Netherlands, accounts for 3/4 of global production of the highest-quality flax long staple fiber. This is made possible by the quality of the soil and the local climate.
The cooperative, founded in 1955, has grown over the years, and today its members grow flax on approximately 12,500 hectares. They bring the properly dried plants from all their members to the facility, where the precious fiber is extracted.
The company employs 110 people at a facility that will cover an area of 7,500 square meters starting in 2027. Thanks to the addition of two new fiber processing lines, the company’s production capacity will increase by 25%. In 2025, it used fiber from 11,500 hectares of land, produced 11,600 tons of flax, and generated revenue of €65 million.
Calira currently operates five scutching lines—the fully mechanical process that separates the long fiber from waste materials—and will soon expand to a total of seven lines.
“Here we break down the straw to obtain, of course, the main product–the long fibers for textile use–but also the wooden remains and various other byproducts, like straw fibers, irregular pieces, and seeds,” explains Vincet Boche, president, Calira, and farmer.
“Everything is useful when it comes to linen. The wooden parts are reused for wooden alternative uses either pressed in panels, or used for animal beds’ wooden curls, and industrial warming uses, among others. We recover all the material, and this process is powered entirely by electricity, while we use no chemicals, but simply mechanical processes. We operate in a clean way because there is no effluent. We only produce dust that we manage, an then returns to the soil afterward. Nor we follow wet phases to rust the fiber, a technique used in other parts of the world, but more damaging as the fiber become less resistant and durable,” he continues underscoring how fully sustainably they operate.
“That’s what makes our industry unique. It’s all about the process from field to fiber,” he adds.
Their products are entirely traceable as all the fiber bales they stock in their warehouse are all numbered and traced according to batch, lot and name of the farmer who grew that.
“We provide traceability from the field all the way to the fiber batch. And every batch is classified by harvest year, by type of fiber and grower,” he continues explaining how transparent each fiber bale is stored.
Farming methods are also closely linked to sustainable practices such as regenerative agriculture. For example, farmers use crop rotation practices to allow the soil to rest. “We also grow wheat, sugar beets, potatoes, and rapeseed, according to a constant crop rotation. Therefore, we don’t return to the same plot for six or seven years. We follow these are agronomic rules to ensure good results over the long term. We’re managing living organisms–the land and the plants are a living system,” he explains.
Moreover, as also linen cultivation suffers from climatic change, they continue to test and develop new seed varieties by using natural genetic crossing methods, while keenly avoiding the use of OGM seeds. “It takes us ten years to test and develop new seed varieties,” he tells.
They have also introduced the cultivation of winter linen variants that, despite its quality is not as high as the summer ones, though it has grown increasingly resistant to low temperature and always better in terms of quality of the fiber.
Across France, there are approximately 1,700 flax farmers cultivating an area of about 200,000 hectares, which has produced this yield but could soon expand to 350,000, a record figure they had never reached before. “Ten years ago, we were at barely 100,000. And what also allows flax to achieve this quality and undergo this processing is that in Europe we have the entire supply chain including farmers, scutchers, spinners, and weavers,” explains Boche.
“There is interest in flax cultivation, and it continues to grow, partly because we are constantly working in everyone’s best interest,” explains Boche.
“A cooperative is a shared resource and a system of social solidarity based on the number of producers involved. This helps growers better stand costs and risks, including harvest processing and scutching,” adds Lucie Morgand, a linen grower of Calira and president, AGPL (General Association of Flax Producers).
The cooperative’s goal is to ensure a steady supply and guarantee stability, as the flax business–as any other natural origin fiber–is also subject to price fluctuations, harvest trends, and fiber availability.
Guaranteeing a stable supply is also possible thanks to a collaboration with the Alliance for European Flax-Linen and Hemp (formerly CELC), the only global agro-industrial association founded in 1951 that brings together all stakeholders in the European flax supply chain.
“All these aspects are characteristic of Made in Europe linen. It’s a very specific terroir, with a western climate, where it rains at the right time, and where the weather is good at the right time—it’s the know-how of farmers specialized in flax,” commented Chantal Malingrey, head of marketing at Alliance for European Flax-Linen and Hemp.
The association’s activities are designed to help linen businesses gain global visibility. It comprises 10,000 companies in the linen supply chain from 16 countries and has created two certifications—Master of Flax-Fiber and Master of Linen—that guarantee origin, traceability, sustainable farming, and the traceable origins of the flax plant.
Currently, a significant amount of flax is purchased by Chinese spinning mills, as well as operators from other non-European countries, with only a small portion spinned in Europe, and is then resold to numerous fabric manufacturers across the Old Continent.
By the end of 2027, more spinning mills will be up and running in nearby regions such as Morocco and Portugal, injecting new energy into a stage of the value chain that can fully align the entire supply of a fiber that is robust and capable of withstanding all weather conditions—including challenging market situations—and thriving further on the continent to which it belongs.