Top wool advocate bales out
The conversion of productive farmland into trees has pretty much annihilated the wool industry.
The situation for wool may be dire, but Waipukurau woolbroker Philippa Wright is not walking away from it.
Wright hopes the situation will improve and says she’s not going to leave the industry just because of its present state. She says her staff are young, positive and enthusiastic and she owes it to them to stay and see it through.
Wright says one of the worst things she’s had to do over recent months is to ring up farmers and tell them what their wool is selling for.
“In some cases, greasy wool has been selling for a dollar a kilogram. Neither myself nor my father can remember wool fetching such a low price,” she told Rural News.
Wright says the central Hawkes Bay, where her business is based, has been hit by the double whammy of Covid-19 and the drought. She says a lot of capital stock have been killed as a result of the drought – so the number of sheep to be shorn will be lower than normal.
“The other thing in Hawkes Bay is that it is a big second shear area through May, June and July and is one of the busiest times of the year,” Wright adds. “But a lot of people simply aren’t going to be able to second shear because of the lack of feed for their stock so we are going to miss out on that.”
Wright says Covid meant that during lockdown it was not possible to sell wool, but during that time the industry – including shearers, classers, scourers and exporters – spent time communicating with each other and finding out what all the different groups were doing and how they could best work together.
She says while sales were restricted during lockdown, so too was processing wool and it’s taken time for the product to move. “India has only just opened up, Europe is still closed and while China is open it’s taking 90% of the wool from Australia and a large amount from South Africa and the UK,” Wright explains.
“China is also taking some of our wool, but when they have finished producing the yarn, carpet, jerseys or coats it begs the question where do these products go,” she adds.
“Sixty percent of the products that China produces from our wool goes to the USA and at the moment, that market is closed.”
A US-based company developing a vaccine to reduce methane emissions in cattle has received another capital injection from New Zealand’s agriculture sector.
Wools of New Zealand has signed a partnership agreement with a leading Chinese manufacturer as the company looks to further grow demand in China and globally.
Opportunities for Māori are there for the taking if they scale up their operations and work more closely together.
OPINION: Farmer shareholders of two of New Zealand's largest co-operatives have an important decision to make this month and what they decide could change the landscape of the dairy and meat sectors in New Zealand.
As the first of a new series of interprofessional rural training hubs opened in South Taranaki late September, Rural Health Network has celebrated the move as a "key pathway to encourage the growth and retention of health professionals in rural areas".
OPINION: Ageing lefty Chris Trotter reckons that the decision to delay recognition of Palestinian statehood is more than just a fit…
OPINION: A mate of yours truly recently met someone at a BBQ who works at a big consulting firm who spent…