You don’t expect to see the managing director of a sizeable company wearing overalls with grease-covered hands, holding a piece of machinery.
Apparently that is the norm at Woolyarns.
Recently a piece of equipment at the Lower Hutt yarn manufacturing plant needed to be fixed and managing director Neil Mackie was on the tools, using his knowledge to mend it.
Woolyarns Holdings incoming chief executive Andy May said it is a not a rare sight.
He said Mackie’s predecessor, Peter Woods, son of founder Colin Woods, would turn up to work, don a pair of overalls and spend every day helping maintain the plant.
Woolyarns has been in business 80 years, has annual turnover of about $20 million and today employs more than 50 people producing machine, hand and weaving yarns.
Many have worked there for 30-plus years, including retiring MD Mackie, who has worked for the privately owned company for over 40 years.
May is relative newcomer.
His father worked for Alliance Textiles in Dunedin and then textile plants in Timaru and Oamaru.
Andy May studied at Otago University and worked in sales for Summit Wool Spinners in Oamaru for 17 years and for Woolyarns for the past 10.
An estimated 85% of Woolyarns’ business is domestic but international sales are growing.
May said the fundamental process of producing yarn has been in existence for centuries, but that muck-in and can-do attitude means Woolyarns has added its own engineering touches and developed its own technology, especially the blending of possum fibre and wool.
It extends to designing and building a $3m plant that cleans the fibre and removes the guard hair ahead of processing.
May said the Woods family have supported the textiles industry for 80 years and continue to do so.
They invested to support the development of possum fibre industry and are doing the same with cashmere, building the bespoke processing plant and buying and storing fibre until they have economies of scale and can start manufacturing.
