Help save global wool industry

Wool executive director and International Wool Textile Organisation president Peter Ackroyd. Photo / Duncan Brown

The farmers' wool levy, tossed out in a growers' referendum almost five years ago, will be on the agenda again this year as New Zealand is urged to show more united support for international moves to save the industry.

Prompts came as global Campaign for Wool executive director and International Wool Textile Organisation president Peter Ackroyd and British Wool Marketing Board CEO Ian Hartley spoke to industry representatives and other interested parties in Napier on Tuesday.

Later, Wool Levy Review Committee chairman Derek Daniell said a recommendation supporting reintroduction of the levy will go before the Beef+Lamb NZ annual conference in March.

The review was set up two years ago by the organisation, known as Meat + Wool NZ until the restructuring after 2009's "no" vote. If the recommendation is adopted, a new referendum will be planned, with farmers considering funding research, development, skills, education and market development, possibly including the Campaign for Wool, a pet project of its founding patron Prince Charles.

There's a significant Hawke's Bay influence on the committee, with Flemington farmer and Primary Wool Co-Operative director Hamish De Lautour and Waipukurau wool buyer Philippa Wright.

Unable to attend Tuesday's meeting, Daniell said the logic of the recommendation will be revealed in the next few weeks. "We are hoping to get a levy funded $3-$4 million to get a few things done to the industry."

Dwindling money from the former levy is still being used, but Daniell said: "The other wool-producing countries are saying, 'Come on, you guys, let's get us all working together'. If we abandon this, the whole industry could sink without trace."

Under the Commodity Levies Act, a referendum must be held every five years and, in 2009, farmers were asked to approve a reducing levy, which would have been set at 3c/kg in 2012. Instead, they opposed the levy, directly cutting about $6.4 million from the Meat + Wool NZ income, and indirectly cutting $5 million.

At the time, chairman Mike Petersen said the vote had sent a clear message that growers were dissatisfied with investments.

Ackroyd and Hartley expressed confidence in the future of wool in its challenges from synthetic fibres and from projections that even doubling the 2 per cent share of the fibre market in the US, the industry would still struggle to meet demand.

They implored targeting high-end fashion and interiors' markets.

"In my country," said Ackroyd, a fifth generation Yorkshire farmer, "eighty per cent of the clothing products end up in landfills, but only the wool will be biodegradable."

Hartley said input from the UK's future king enabled wool promotion in some unlikely markets.

Ackroyd and Hartley were in Wellington yesterday meeting government and ministry leaders before going to Christchurch to meet South Island industry representatives today.