Mark Patterson Promotes NZ Wool at India's Bharat Textile Expo

He was attending the mega Bharat Textile Expo in New Delhi, which has 3500 stands and attracts more than a million visitors over four days, supporting a NZ delegation to promote our quality coarse wool.

India is the second largest importer of our wool - last year it took 17,000 tonnes worth more than $79 million. China is the largest importer of our wool wool. 

Patterson says, since the Wool Board disbanded many years ago, little engagement there's been with India has been mainly broker-driven and transactional. He says when a NZ wool delegation attended the Bharat Textile Expo last year, they were pleasantly surprised.

"It turns out NZ wool is held in very high regard and there is a real interest in what we are doing in terms of our accreditation systems and the ethical way that we farm our sheep. This is because India manufactures wool carpets for the very high-end markets in the USA and Europe and want the highest quality wool for their products," he says.

A feature of their manufacturing process is that it is primarily hand-knotted by some 30,000 specialist craftspeople. This, he says, is in contrast to China where the manufacturing process is highly industrialised and mechanised.

He says the positive thing for NZ is that Prime Minister Modi is personally leading and promoting a programme that would see the country tripling the size of its textile industry by the end of the decade. This is called the five F strategy - farm, fibre, factory, fashion, and foreign exchange.

"That's the driver and I am absolutely confident that there are real opportunities for our farmers to sell more very high-quality wool to India," he says.

Patterson says a few months ago a delegation from all the major wool manufacturers in India came down to NZ and were blown away by our farming systems, and the way we handle wool in the shed and scour the product.

"A lot of these companies are family-owned, multigenerational businesses and they have got a real affinity with fibre in the same way our multigenerational farmers do. There is a sort of combined respect for the fibre and a meeting of minds in many ways and they are keen to partner with us more," he says.

Patterson says another visit to NZ by Indian wool manufacturers is planned to take place soon.

High-Level Meetings

Patterson says during his visit, which was just after Prime Minister Modi visit to our country, NZ was in the spotlight in India.

He says there is no doubt that this helped get access to some of that country's top politicians and businesspeople. This included having a special bilateral roundtable session, co-chaired by him and his Indian counterpart, Minister of State for Textiles, Pabitra Margherita.

Patterson says he also had the opportunity to meet with the Minister of Textiles, Giriraj Singh, carpet manufacturer Obeetee, the International Wool Textile Organisation, the Wool Research Association, and others, to discuss ways that we can work better together.

"One of the highlights was to see the NZ woolen carpet in their Parliament debating chamber and to meet the Speaker of Parliament, Om Birla, the third highest ranked politician who gave the backstory of the significance of this carpet," he says.