Owen Hembry: Strands of hope for struggling wool growers

New international sales initiatives and recognition by US standards authorities could make a brighter future for struggling wool growers.

But as some farmers breed away from wool with prices that barely cover their costs, will help arrive in time?

Wool exports for the year ending April were down 17.3 per cent to 115,665 tonnes, with the value down 8.5 per cent to $568.8 million.

Sheep numbers fell 11 per cent to 34 million in the year to June 2008, while the Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry last year said inflation adjusted prices were only 6.2 per cent of the peak of the Korean War wool boom.

Elders Primary Wool - equally owned by Elders Rural Holdings and Primary Wool Cooperative - unveiled its new brand, Just Shorn, at last week's National Agricultural Fieldays, with plans to market natural, sustainable luxury carpets and rugs in the United States.

Elders Rural Holdings managing director Stuart Chapman says research shows there is demand for an environmentally responsible product like New Zealand wool carpet.

"That's a market that's perhaps commencing at the more affluent end and it's people that are changing their lifestyle and actually demanding those sort of products rather than it just being a fad," Chapman says.

"All we need to do now is just finalise the specs for the particular carpet collection that CCA is going to retail on ... over the next two to three weeks and we should be buying wool by the end of July."

Elders in January announced a deal to directly supply US carpet retailer CCA Global Partners and five key carpet manufacturers.

The new range will be officially launched at a textile convention in Las Vegas in January next year.

Charlie Dilks, senior vice president and product officer of CCA Global Partners, says: "You have my personal commitment and the full force of CCA behind this project."

Chapman says Elders will have grower contracts with particular specifications and improved prices".

"There's enough elasticity in the pricing of the complete value chain where we can lift the value at the retail end because we're going to sell the New Zealand story, sell the sustainable, natural, beautiful, environmentally friendly part of the woollen carpet," he says.

"We will sell that at a premium and we know people will be happy to pay that slight premium but the difference that makes back at the grower end is significant."

Woollen carpets generally retail for about the same price as their synthetic rivals but they account for only 2 per cent of the US market.

Growing the US market share of woollen carpets to only 3 per cent would use up New Zealand's entire strong wool clip, Chapman says.

The ANZ Commodity Price Index for wool jumped 9.1 per cent in May - albeit from a 23-year low the previous month.

Federated Farmers Meat & Fibre chairman Bruce Wills says prices are dismal and the industry is in crisis.

"Farmers, they're holding out some hope but I guess there's a sense of urgency amongst farmers that every week that goes by currently the wool clip is declining," Wills says.

"Farmers every week are making decisions to get out of sheep ... and not only are they still making decisions to get out of sheep but they're making decisions to move away from wool breeds to the meat breeds."

That wool has so little value for some farmers it is becoming a by-product to be removed by necessity is a shocking reality for a product which instinctively still feels like the premium choice.

There is some excitement in the models being put forward by Elders and Wool Partners International but until farmers feel more wool dollars in the pocket any initiative, however promising, is only an idea.

"Sadly in the wool industry the history's full of great promise and great ideas - where's it got us today but some of the lowest wool prices that farmers have ever seen," Wills says.

"Certainly great and I applaud the Elders of the world, the WPIs that come out with these initiatives but I just hope it's not too little too late for the New Zealand wool industry."

Wool Partners International - launched last July combining the wool operations of PGG Wrightson with new farmer co-operative Wool Grower Holdings - is trumpeting a breakthrough in the US with an industry standard for woollen carpets in sustainable buildings.

Chairwoman Theresa Gattung pulls no punches saying it is the biggest thing to happen in the last few years for the wool industry.

Wool Partners hopes farmers will own half the company through Wool Grower Holdings - although Gattung says it could be more - depending on how many choose to buy shares, and hold 60 per cent of the voting rights.

Gattung visited the US late last year thinking the main opportunity was in the consumer market, but several manufacturers said there was a huge opportunity in the commercial sector, such as hotels, especially with the modern focus on green buildings.

However, the US standards for green buildings had been formulated by the synthetic industry and discriminated against wool, including no points for being biodegradable, she says.

"They [manufacturers] basically said if you guys don't sort this then wool's going to be out the back door possibly for good."

Wool Partners pushed for US standards administrators to recognise wool's qualities as a sustainable carpet fibre and the outcome is a specific performance table for woollen carpets administered by the National Standards Foundation and the green building awards body Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design.

Wool Partners' guiding principles are to unify growers, consolidate the wool clip, collaborate in the industry and innovate in the market, with strategic initiatives including an integrated supply chain.

Gattung envisages a model similar to the merino wool sector where more than half the wool is sold using direct customer contracts rather than auctions. "We don't envisage that no wool will go to the auction system, simply because there's 120 million kilos of wool a year and also because wool varies in quality but we envisage that returns to growers will improve just like they have in terms of merino wool prices if we can get a much higher proportion on direct contract than we've got today, which is basically negligible."

"The industry's been in dire straits for 20 years maybe, so it was never going to be fixed between breakfast and morning tea," Gattung says.

"But we are quietly confident that what we've built up in the last few months and what we're actually working on at the moment is going to come to fruition but I can't give you a timeframe."

Those farmers thinking of turning away from wool could dig in for the promise of revival - and at more than half a billion dollars of export earnings it would be welcome to the economy - but they can only wait for so long.