New Zealand once lived off the sheep's back. Now the wool industry is struggling just to survive. Maria Slade talks to one long-time supporter who is still doing all he can to ensure its future.
Bay de Lautour Bay de Lautour believes he still needs to earn the royal honour he was granted in 2000 for services to farming.
His passion for the wool industry is "a nationalistic sort of thing", says the sheep farmer from Takapau in the central Hawke's Bay who was made
a member of the New Zealand Order of Merit.
It is also a financial thing. Between them, the de Lautour family have put well over $3 million into the farmer group Primary Wool Co-operative and Elders Primary Wool, the joint venture with rural services firm Elders to market New Zealand carpet wool.
About $1.4 million of that has gone into developing Just Shorn, the consumer brand Elders Primary Wool hopes will reposition the New Zealand fibre as a luxury, sustainable product that can command much greater export prices.
"What I've put into it has all had to be borrowed, basically," says de Lautour. "But I'm determined that we're going to make it."
Wool prices are now so low that many farmers complain they can hardly cover the cost of shearing. The fear is the wool industry will die out.
De Lautour says it is worse than that. With the national flock now at half the size it was in 1984, he believes it could spell the death knell for the sheep industry altogether. Sheep farming is reliant on wool to make it really viable, he says.
"We're ram breeders and we know with the better sheep, the wool actually contributes half the net profit of a sheep farm.
"Sheep without the wool really don't produce any more income than beef cattle."
It is generally agreed that the New Zealand carpet or strong wool industry's only salvation is to relaunch itself to affluent overseas consumers, positioning the fibre as high quality, pure and sustainable and charging a premium for it.
Consolidating the clip, meeting high standards and singing off the same marketing song sheet are not new ideas.
De Lautour, who has been chairman of Primary Wool Co-operative for eight years and on the board of its various incarnations for 35, says the co-op tried to get involved after the 2000 Wool Board-commissioned McKinsey & Co report on how the industry should be restructured.
In 2005, PWC formed Elders Primary Wool with Elders, "and we've been pursuing that ever since", he says.
Meanwhile rival rural services company PGG Wrightson has set up Wool Partners International with farmer co-operative Wool Grower Holdings. It is launching its own luxury wool brand, Laneve.
The existence of two competing groups chasing the same prize has done little to unite the notoriously fragmented wool sector.
Elders has accused Wool Partners of benefiting from farmer levy money as a result of its purchase of the Wools of New Zealand marketing group.
Wool Partners, in turn, believes Elders has been overstating its agreement with US retailing group CCA Global, promising farmers $5 a kilo for their wool on the strength of it.
De Lautour concedes an excitable agent in the South Island oversold the situation to some growers.
Events took a surprise turn last month when directors of PWC and Wool Grower Holdings met to discuss a possible future together.
Both sides say they are a long way from the point of merger talks, but all options are on the table.
De Lautour says he called the meeting for the good of farmers.
"There is that little bit of progress. We were encouraged that they were prepared to come and talk."
