The way New Zealand strong wool is traded is broken and needs to be fixed if growers are to see sustainable returns for their work, delegates at the recent Primary Industries Summit were told.
During a panel discussion on the future of wool, both Federated Farmers meat and wool chair Toby Williams and Devold NZ general manager Craig Smith said the auction system is not working for either farmers or consumers.
Smith said that right now the wool supply chain is long and complex and many of the brands at the end of it are not engaged enough with those earlier in the chain.
“There’s that disconnect between the brand and the grower – a lot of brands have no idea,” he said.
“Big corporate brands, global brands, have come to New Zealand and said, ‘We want to buy some wool direct from the farm like you do.’ I ask, ‘Well, what wool do you buy?’ ‘Well, I don’t know. It just arrives.’ So we’ve got to get the brands to invest in the product that they’re buying.”
Williams has decided not to put his farm’s wool through the auction system but is yet to sell it through another channel.
“What’s the point in selling it through to you? All you’re doing is basing your price on the auction and I don’t like the pricing of the auction because it doesn’t respect what we’re doing.”
Williams thinks farmers should pool their clips and offer it to buyers at a price based on the quality and colour, but that is a work in progress.
Associate Minister of Agriculture Mark Patterson said the government has invested in Wool Impact in an effort to fill a leadership void that has plagued the sector since the demise of the Wool Board.
It is also keen to revitalise the wool manufacturing industry here.
“We’ve got to re-establish our manufacturing base. This is where the real opportunity is. This is not a millions-of-dollars discussion, it is a billions-of-dollars discussion if we get this right. So there’s a whole heap of companies out there with good ideas, good products. How can we work as New Zealand Inc?”
Heather Gee-Taylor, a farmer and agri-advocate, said while returns for strong wool are depressing, her farm business is trying to maintain clip quality.
“I think for me as a young farmer, especially coming in with interest rates the way that they are, and cost structures being so high, it’s been about ‘How can I cut my cloth like [the Ministry for Primary Industries] has been doing?’
“And for me, it has been in the harvesting process. I run an open gang-type shearing situation and we do a lot of our lambs ourselves and we’re trying to cut costs where we can, but we take so much more pride in our product now, because we’re there in the shed doing it and seeing the wool getting taken off the backs.
“At the end of the day, we’re the ones putting it in the press, whether it’s me or Dad or one of our personal staff. So for us we’re all about making the wool harvesting exciting too.”
With more consumers aware of the impact synthetic fibres are having on the environment the timing is right for more education and marketing of wool’s natural advantage.
“One of the big things is I get up to go to work in the morning and I love it, because I’m working with the world’s best fibre,” Smith said.”
“And everyone should be proud for growing wool because no one else can beat it.”
In Focus Podcast: Full Show | 5 July
We have a different type of episode this week.
Bryan moderated some of the panel discussions at the 2024 Primary Industries Summit in Wellington. One of them was on the future of wool and brought together some of the leaders in an industry that is struggling to return fair value to growers. How can we turn this around?
Join Bryan as he discusses the way forward with Federated Farmers meat and wool chair Toby Williams; Minister for Rural Communities Mark Cameron; farmer and agri-advocate Heather Gee-Taylor; and Devold NZ general manager and Campaign for Wool trustee Craig Smith.
