On arrival at the factories, the greasy is first sorted by hand in order to separate the damaged hair and impurities from the material that is to be processed: an important process that eliminates such things as pieces of packaging that have broken off while the bales were being opened, vegetable matter and fibres that have been soiled by the goat itself.

The selected material is now ready for washing in water with detergents specially developed for cleaning natural fibres.

The use of strong detergents is avoided in order to maintain the "natural" colour of cashmere.

After washing the material is stored in special rooms, or sometimes in the open air, for drying.

Now the fibre is clean but the fine hair is still mixed up with the coarse.