Laurie Boniface pretty much stumbled into the wool industry. Sixty years later he retires having spent 40 of those years tutoring the nation’s wool classers.
When he started his career in 1964 when there were 70 million sheep, eight wool selling centres and 32 wool scours. Today there are 25 million sheep, two selling centres and three wool scours.
Boniface’s contribution to the wool industry, first as a buyer and then as a tutor, was acknowledged at the recent NZ Wool Classers Association (NZWCA) professional development day and annual meeting in Mosgiel.
Former NZWCA chair Bill Dowle asked where the sector would have been without Boniface to nurture generations of classers.
A fellow tutor, Richard Gavigan, said Boniface ensured the course survived despite change and fluctuating fortunes.
“He carried the course through tough times and multiple owners and was responsible for ensuring wool classing classes continued because they could well have disappeared.”
One of Boniface’s students, Craig Smith, said the knowledge he acquired from the course has taken him from working in a wool store, to wool buyer and now the NZ manager of international company, Devold Wool Direct.
“The knowledge I learnt from Laurie has got me where I am today,” he told the development day.
Boniface was raised in Palmerston North and was introduced to agriculture through weekends and holidays spent on relatives’ farms.
He was hooked.
“Farm life was for me.”
An uncle provided a reality check, noting that purchasing a farm was unlikely to be affordable, but he offered an alternative.
Noel Beder, a local wool buyer, was visiting his farm and he introduced him to Boniface as there could be an opportunity.
During school holidays he started working for Beder and in 1964 that led to a job as a store hand.
Boniface started at the bottom of the food chain, making smoko and helping to press the bales. He was forbidden, however, from sewing caps on the bales as that was above his station.
In 1967 he went to Massey University to study for a Diploma in Wool and Wool Classing, a two-year course.
Returning to work for Beder, he eventually moved into wool buying, a role he retained when the business was sold to Feltex, where he learnt to value wool prior to sale.
After briefly working for another Manawatū wool company, in 1984 Boniface got a job tutoring at Massey University, where he worked under Bill Regnault who headed the wool department and became his mentor, helping him become equally passionate about wool and teaching.
“Teaching was my calling. I loved teaching, I loved the students and imparting knowledge,” he said.
Little did he know that during his teaching career he would have six employers.
He taught everyone from young students to farmers, stock and station agents, those in the meat industry involved in slipe wool and visiting international groups.
Boniface was also involved in judging and recalled an incident while assessing fleeces at the Horowhenua Show.
One white wool fleece was found to be riddled with black fibre so was put in the black and coloured fleece section, much to the anger of its owner.
Boniface eased the tension by offering to buy it on behalf of Massey University, an offer that made the owner extremely proud, not knowing that it was to become a study prop.
“Little did she know it went into the fault and pigmented line of white wool with black fibre running through it.”
Boniface practised what he preached, for two years classing Merino fleeces at Little Valley Station near Alexandra.
He also had a sabbatical in China, where he explained NZ wool to local farmers and the textile industry.
He loved his 14 years at Massey.
“Every job has its ups and downs. I had very few downs.”
When Massey closed its wool division in 1998, delivery of the course was picked up by Woolpro, a division of what was then Meat and Wool NZ, and delivered extramurally.
A year later he had a new employer, Tectra, who he thought would see his career out.
It was not to be.
For two years Lincoln University delivered the course before it was picked up by the Taratahi Agricultural Training Centre.
When the centre was placed in receivership in 2018, the role fell to the Southland Institute of Technology and then the NZ Institute of Skills and Technology, Te Pukenga.
Boniface said it was his passion for teaching and for his students that kept him in the industry.
“The students are focused on what they do and that gives me immense satisfaction.”
He concedes he would struggle for motivation if he was still a wool merchant.
“It would be soul destroying dealing with a client and telling them values are unchanged given the knowledge of what it has cost to produce.”
He officially retires late next month, bringing down the curtain on a career notable for more than the change in values especially for crossbred.
It has traversed the shift to capless packs, the move from jute and flax packs to synthetic, and sale by separation where samples are taken from bales and analysed, and buyers assess the quality and values in display boxes.
Adjusting to a quieter life in Palmerston North will not be a struggle for the self-confessed potterer.
There is the house to paint, walks to be walked and he has been assured his wife Judy has a list of chores.
