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Moral fibre: Time to weave wool’s future

Despite the industry’s travails, some farmers are fighting back, and say there’s a whole new chapter for the environmentally-friendly super-fibre. reports.

Chris Marshall

TOM O’Sullivan says there was once a time when his grandfather could pay his whole farm off with one year’s wool cheque – in 1953.

But O’Sullivan, whose Hawke’s Bay farm runs 5000 perendale ewes, says that would be ‘‘equivalent to winning lotto today’’.

Since 2019, it has cost more to shear a sheep than can be recouped from its wool. O’Sullivan’s farm ran a deficit $6000 that year; last year the deficit blew out to nearly $30,000.

Over the past five years the return has declined to an all-time low of just over $1 per kilogram for strong wool, which accounts for about 85 per cent of the national clip; mostly from romneys and perendales.

It’s a precipitous and unsustainable drop, says O’Sullivan. He calculates the break-even point would be $2.50 to $3 per kilogram.

O’Sullivan is the NZ chairman of Campaign for Wool, an advocacy group launched by the Prince of Wales in 2008 and established here in 2011. He is also a board member for the Strong Wool Action Group (SWAG), which aims to ‘‘reinvigorate the New Zealand wool sector’’.

He says there are two key issues. Firstly, petrochemical companies have aggressively romanced global consumers with synthetic and plastic products.

‘‘Garments, packaging, clothing, you name it, in the last 30 years they have really taken the lion’s share.’’

Secondly, strong wool failed to diversify. Thirty years ago 80 per cent of carpets sold here were woollen, but that has now been floored to around 15 to 20 per cent.

The crisis means change is imperative, says O’Sullivan, who wants a shift in thinking about wool and believes there is potential for more use of what he describes as an environmentallyfriendly super-fibre.

‘‘If we can get what we talk about as a suite of products, I think you’d very quickly see the demand for wool would outstrip supply. I guess that’s the holy grail economically... If people want the raw material, they are going to have to pay for it.’’

O’Sullivan warns farmers ‘‘really need to see some light at the end of the tunnel’’ or they will quit the industry.

Woolkin founder Blythe ReesJones says it’s up to the industry to make wool relevant to consumers again. ‘‘No-one buys an ingredient, they buy a product.

‘‘We’ve got to translate the ingredient into beautiful, welldesigned, really considered products that are then supported by a business programme that speaks to all those unique value traits that Kiwis have as a culture and what we stand for as a nation.’’

Woolkin, a product design company finding innovative new uses for wool, has created a new material – Naturesclip – to allow for more flexibility in design.

Naturesclip is designed to be machinable like timber, moldable like plastic and foldable like metal – all while retaining wool’s inherent properties.

Woolkin’s first products have been aimed at babies and children – one item it offers is a bright red toy fire engine – and Rees-Jones sees potential to replace plastics and has a number of projects in the incubator, such as Bubble Wool – a substitute for bubble wrap and packaging.

‘‘There are all sorts of places it can go… it’s only really limited by our imaginations.’’

But there are also manufacturing limits. While the intention is to eventually bring the entire production chain to New Zealand, some of Woolkin’s processing still has to be done offshore.

Supply chain issues have affected Sam and Sophie Hurley, third-generation farmers at Papanui Estate, a 3300 hectare sheep and beef farm near Hunterville.

While much of their wool is made into carpet, the couple hit upon creating a reusable wool carry-all when plastic supermarket bags were being phased out.

Prototypes soon revealed it could be put into higher-value products, resulting in a range of upmarket felt luggage and hats, which they now produce under the label Honest Wolf.

Felting the wool though means it has to be sent to India, where the bags are also manufactured.

Shipping costs and a bigger carbon footprint are barriers facing others keen to diversify, says Sophie Hurley.

The ultimate goal would be to felt and manufacture locally, which she thinks ‘‘would actually be cheaper’’. But for that to happen, New Zealand needs to bring back machinery and local expertise.

‘‘A bit of it is out of our control, but someone has to put their hand up to try and bring it back.’’

Andrew Dalziel of Big Wool is among those fighting to bring manufacturing back.

Big Wool is an enterprise by Big Save Furniture, one of the country’s largest bed and couch retailers, to increase the company’s use of wool. It has purchased farms to ensure supply, and paying ‘‘well and truly over the market price’’ at $4.50 per kilogram of scoured wool.

Dalziel predicts there will be more localised production.

‘‘I think fundamentally the world has changed. People have realised you can’t rely on China being able to manufacture everything, and shipping to get it here.’’

Dalziel says the few businesses with manufacturing capability in New Zealand are often tied up with their own products, or expense means it makes more sense for companies to have products made overseas, including exporting locally-produced layering to come back in a finished couch or bed.

He says the raw material is here, it’s just a question of what it will take to manufacture locally. ‘‘Probably quite a big capital commitment from the Big Save guys.’’

Dalziel, like O’Sullivan, warns there’s a risk that some farmers will give up altogether, and sell their farmland for forestry.

O’Sullivan saw a ‘‘beautiful rolling farm that would be perfect for stock’’, half an hour out of Hastings, sold for planting last year. ‘‘The forestry guys paid a million bucks more than the nearest pastoral farmer offer they got.’’

Despite the need for help, O’Sullivan is cautious about government intervention in the market, and fears it could open a

‘We’ve got to translate the ingredient into beautiful, well-designed, really considered products.’ WOOLKIN FOUNDER BLYTHE REES-JONES, MAKER OF THIS TOY FIRE ENGINE

can of worms.

‘‘Having said that... the Government has put through a wood strategy that New Zealand-grown wood needs to be used in the building environment, so they have set a precedent.’’

SWAG chief executive Andy Caughey says getting consumers onboard is preferable to government intervention.

The price equation is changing to one of value, Caughey says, with Gen Y and Z consumers making purchasing decisions based on a product’s ultimate disposal. ‘‘There’s a wave of sustainability and this is out of a strong and inherent belief that wool is going to create safer homes.’’

He says wool creates ‘‘a natural environment where your kid can play safely on the carpet, and then at end of life you’ve got a product you feel comfortable putting around trees for suppressing weeds’’.

Caughey says it’s exciting to see enterprises like Big Save paying growers a sustainable return, and taking more control of the value chain to strip out unnecessary costs.

And he says other highvalue products will emerge from fibre deconstruction being developed by the Wool Research Organisation of New Zealand.

Those products could include pigments, particles and powders used in skin care products and printing, and the ability to create very fine yarns by deconstructing a coarse 30-35 micron wool to make an 11-12 micron fibre.

‘‘The best analogy I can give you is Pringles crisps: potato, but not as we know it,’’ says Caughey.

‘‘So you have something homogenous and consistent, repeatable, desirable... It takes a low-value item and makes it into a high-value, highly-desirable item.’’

Caughey says New Zealand has a unique advantage over other countries such as the US.

‘‘We still rely on free-range and relatively low input, and we’re not heavy chemical users like they are offshore, so we have got the ability to position ourselves as a land of milk and honey, and wool.’’

8 SUNDAY NEWS NEWS

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2021-09-19T07:00:00.0000000Z

2021-09-19T07:00:00.0000000Z

https://fairfaxmedia.pressreader.com/article/281672553078827

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