Doing Business : FABRIC AND YARN DYEING : Saba Textiles Takes Colorful Approach to Apparel Business

While more than a few of the county’s businesses are on the brink of dying, one Buena Park company lives to dye. Saba Textiles, which specializes in coloring fabric and yarn, is one of a handful of local firms that makes up the county’s textile industry--one sector of the economy that has remained relatively healthy.

Saba’s customers include such well-known apparel makers as Billabong, Quiksilver, Estrada Moda and Guess. Customers provide a color palette, and lab technicians in the “color kitchen” develop a set of formulas to match. Then the customers provide ready-made clothing to be dyed a rainbow of colors in lots of 200 to 400 pounds.

Saba also dyes yarn for the Southland’s many knitting mills, including Louis Bernard and Beverly Hills. Up to 2,000 pounds of yarn are lowered into giant pressurized vats, where the dye, heated to temperatures up to 265 degrees, circulates around the hundreds of yarn bobbins for eight to 9 1/2 hours. The yarn is dried for two hours at 220 degrees and then wound onto paper cones for shipment to the mills.