ABSTRACT Polysaccharide-based dressings have increasingly become viable alternatives to biologically incompatible and often problematic cotton or viscose gauzes traditionally used for wound dressings. Abundant availability of alginates and their relative ease of solubility in particular have been instrumental in their development into fibres and lately their application as vehicles for delivering drugs. This paper reports on spinning efficiency of various alginate grades (i. e. differing mannuronic/guluronic acid ratios) in a laboratory based extrusion system and explores the effect of proportional inclusion of a second polysaccharide compound on tensile properties of the resulting fibres. Branan ferulate has been focused on as the second polysaccharide, since this has gel forming capabilities currently being harnessed in Sterigel® which is a wound healing formulation containing cross linked branan ferulate.