Adam Jones holds on to 9th place in the British Touring Car Championship. For a full report of the day visit the BTCC website http://www.btcc.net/html/home.php

None of the suppliers Acorn use buy South African Cotton, however there is good news this week that the use of Endosulfan as a an insecticide in South Africa is very close to being banned. The report from Pan UK claims that after 10 years of environmental damage and a large number of deaths among cotton growing communities, The government is to ban it’s use once stocks are used up.

This is evidence that Pressure from end users and Global manufacturers is working.

Gildan produce 500 million garments per year. The whole UK range is available from Acorn and can be personalised with printing or Embriodery with your corporate or club logo. Gildan have over 17,500 employees and are accredtied by the Fair Labour Association. All Gildan’s products carry the Oekotex standard 100 certification, our assurance that no harmful chemicals were used during the manufacture of the products. A responsible manufactrer in partnership with Acorn.

The Acorn sponsored independent Seat Driven By Adam Jones qualified 11th on the grid for the first of tomorrows three races at Thruxton in the 2008 British Touring Car Championship.  The works Vauxall driven by Tom Onslow-Cole is on pole. Watch it on ITV  live tomorrow and look out for the Team Air Cool car no. 21. Adam called in to the factory on his way down to Thruxton yesterday and took with him some stickers to give away on Sunday during  the lunch break when the pits are open for the public walk about. Every one gets a chance to see the drivers up close and get autographs and freebies.

Last year our senior design guy Duncan broke his ankle early in the cricket season. Last night in one of the first games of the year he popped his knee cap and the hospital received a visit from him again until 3 am this morning. We now have Duncan back on crutches with a torn tendon that cannot be examined for three weeks until the swelling goes down. So another early summer on crutches. We can not understand it as no one seem to move that fast on a cricket field !!!!

 Maybe he should just stick to cards. Get well soon we need you.

 A pallet of Dickies top selling safety shoe the Storm Trainer was shipped off this week to Nigeria as part of the latest shipment to Nigeria. Acorn was chosen last year by one of Nigeria’s top cabling companies as their workwear supply partner after a visit to the UK by their managing director. The quality of clothing, personalisation and customer support won Acorn the contract. Managing Director of Acorn Clive Horlor comments, that the range of garments chosen included top branded names such as Kustom Kit, Dickies and Gildan. This is the third contract we have won in this market. The climate and working conditions require quality workwear as  local goods just won’t stand the tough conditions.

Carbon reduction in Earth Positive clothing offers a great potential for end users to add to their carbon reduction plan. Today for the first time leisure clothing and staff uniforms can be part of the Company policy to reduced their carbon footprint. Continental, one of Europe’s largest clothing manufacturers has introduced a range of leisure and promotional clothing that has a greatly reduced carbon footprint.

A typical earth positive t shirt has a reduced carbon footprint of 89% over a standard t shirt. This coupled with organ cotton and Fair wear foundation registration makes Earth Positive clothing a leading manufacturer in the garment industry when it comes to saving the planet. Acorn stock the full range and are able to personalise with embroidery or printing.

Hi temp washing for workwear is very useful in some working conditions. Check out the Kustom Kit range for the 60 degree wash polo shirts Code: KK400. Acorn have the full range of Kustom kit clothing for both work workwear and leisure. The range can be printed or embroidered in our own workshops.

25 years this month. We are celebrating Acorn’s 25th year in business this month. Acorn was born from a need for the family group of sport shops to print uniforms for the staff. It was decided to invest in screen printing equipment and so Acorn was born. It was soon apparent that there was a need for printed clothing and Acorn was established in it’s own right.

Over the last 25 years technology within the screen printing industry has changed considerably. 25 years ago was a far cry from today’s computer generated artwork and printing machines. Artwork text was produced  by letter set and camera work . The darkroom now long gone (and a good job to) is just a distant memory.

Acorn today is still a family business and with the family being involved in the printing industry for 6 generations there is a long family tradition associated with all forms of printing. Today Acorn have a production department that both Print and embroider garments for a wide range of customers. Acorn was traditionally involved  in promotion, leisure wear and subcontract printing, that has been expanded to promotioanl gifts with two new divisions being created Acorn workwear and Acorn Signs.

The sign divison caters for  Exhibition signs, banners, shop signage and vehicle livery with it’s own workshop onsite at Coventry.

All the team look forward to our next 25 years. Acorn will continue to invest in the new technology as it appears over the horizon.

We have updated the look of the bog to fall in line with the Corporate look of the web site. The news and views from Acorn will continue and over the next week we plan to add a snippet of news to the front page so anything of interest can be viewed and fully explored on the blog. Happy reading from the Acorn team.