About Parà

Parà is a Family Company that has reached and exceeded the prestigious milestone of 100 years in business. Founded in 1921 for three generations it has been producing textiles with outstanding aesthetic and technical qualities used for sun protection, indoor and outdoor furnishing accessories, and marine. Apart from the expected quality, service, design and price, Parà has much to contribute to the added value of every client’s collection. Parà’s core values are at the heart of everything they do and make.

Parà's Core Values

Care for the customer – truthful, open communication; reliable expectations through under-promising and over-delivering.

Care for quality – the detailed and accurate preparation of yarns and fabrics guarantee Parà’s top-quality production.

Care for service – Parà considers all requests for new designs and constructions carefully, to iron out potential problems before wastefully spending time and money on a wild-goose-chase. Detailed preparation and discussion lead to a secure investment and eventual orders.

Care for customer efficiency – Parà provides an extensive stock-supported collection of piece-dyed plain and semi-plain fabrics in natural fibres enables efficient adoption of hundreds of colour and texture options. Parà’s stock-supported Tempotest© collection of hundreds of designs and colours of solution-dyed acrylic is the world-leading collection of awning, marine and leisure fabrics.

Care for reliability – What works in the laboratory sometimes fails during production, and sometimes one production lot is significantly different from another. Parà’s systems ensure that production is repeatable time and time again, conforming to tight tolerances through frequent testing at each stage of production.

Care for Parà’s 600 staff – ISO9001 guarantees the excellent working conditionsfor all the Parà team, including air-conditioned production plants to defendagainst the hot Italian summer weather. Dust particles are removed and compressed into briquettes for use as solid fuel firelighters.

Care for the environment – At Parà’s main production plant, photo-voltaic panels on all the roofs contribute to the electricity supply, as do the combined steam, heat, and electrical power from the gas-powered generators. Moreover, process water is treated in active-charcoal settlement tanks, and returned to water supplies at 94% pure, designated as safe to drink. The spent charcoal is extracted and dried for use as organic fertilisers on adjacent farmland.

Care for design – a fully staffed department concentrates of both print and weave designs are at your service. Clients may use Parà’s designs, or their own, or both and Parà’s expert team will transform them from idea to fabric.

Care for technology – new looms, printing machines, colour kitchen, fully-robotised warehouse, management systems, energy control and optimisation all rely on the latest technology. Parà’s constant reinvestment of profits ensures state-of-the-art, reliably high-quality production.

Care for the future – Parà’s research and development team has created new ranges of recycled and recyclable fabrics, in both natural fibre and man-made high-performance yarns.

Products

NATURAL FIBRE COLLECTIONS FOR INDOOR DÉCOR

100% cotton, 100% linen and unions, piece-dyed, perfectly coloured, stocked in depth for indoor décor. MOQ 40m.
Rotary and digital prints using vat (Indanthrene) and reactive dyes on natural fibre base-cloths, made to order. MOQ 200m Rotary, 40m Digital.

HIGH PERFORMANCE PRINTS FOR INDOOR/OUTDOOR

Digital prints on a range of Tempotest© Star PET base-cloths, made to order. MOQ 40m.

Hundreds of plains, block stripes, and fantasy stripes for AWNINGS, stocked in depth. MOQ 60m (1 roll)
Specialist ranges of, plains and stripes, some breathable, some coated waterproof, for MARINE use, stocked in depth. MOQ 60m (1 roll)
Tempotest© HOME Etamine, lightweight cloths in double-width for gentle shading and light diffusion for cabanas, windows etc, with open-weave sheers, stocked in depth. MOQ 1 roll
Tempotest© HOME PLAINS AND STRUCTURES in a comprehensive range of colours and designs in a wide range of colours and designs for high-performance “indoor/outdoor” use, stocked in depth. MOQ 1 roll.
Tempotest© HOME TAILOR-MADE collection – special designs that are made to order using a collection of 65 “standard” yarns with chenille and boucle effect yarns, and REVOLUTIONARY long-staple fibre yarns that look and feel “natural” yet perform to the highest specifications of colourfastness. Very attractive MOQ, just 100m for your world-exclusive fabrics.

Technical Testing

Both Tempotest© acrylic and Tempotest© Star PET are solution-dyed, where the colour is built in during the birth of the fibre. Simply, an apple may be red on the outside, but white on the inside. This is analogous to a white fibre or yarn being dyed in a bath or pressure vessel, so the colour attaches only to its outer surface. Compare that with a strawberry that is pink all the way through, analogous to Tempotest© solution-dyed acrylic. The colour forms a molecular bond with the acrylic itself, so the colour is almost permanent, even in the harshest UV radiation.

The test for colourfastness to light is BS EN ISO105-B02, where samples are exposed to the radiation from a xenon arc lamp for several days, to represent exposure to several years’ worth of sunshine. With a maximum score of “8 on the blue scale”, Tempotest© colours score a minimum of 7/8 and many score grade 8.

Tempotest© is tested to a much higher level than just colourfastness to light. It is tested for colourfastness to weather. This test, BS EN ISO105-B04, is similar to the B02 test, but every 30 minutes, the test specimens are sprayed with water at 60˚C that promotes mould growth (as it is wet) and acts as a lens to increase the UV effect on the fibre. This much more aggressive test is scored on the “grey scale” with a maximum score of 5. Tempotest© yarns score 4/5 or 5. This is a far better prediction of the colourfastness of the fabric under realistic conditions.

Tempotest© weaves are carefully constructed to resist wind and rain as well as sun. The yarns are slightly elastic, so they return the fabrics to their original shape.