THREAT SEEN TO WOOL

Press, Volume LXXXIX, Issue 27075, 25 June 1953, Page 9

THREAT SEEN TO WOOL

Challenge Of Synthetics (N.Z. Press Association—Copyright) (Rec. 10 p.m.) SYDNEY, June 24. “Australia is facing probably the greatest threat of economic chaos in her history,” Mr O. McL. Falkiner, president of the New South Wales Sheepbreeders’ Association, said today. The threat, he said, came from synthetics. Australian woolgrowers now had to fight great synthetic companies in the United States. England and Italy. He said Australians might like high wool prices, but they were not good for thp wool industry. Mr Falkiner added: “I am told that one overseas company alone is spending £14,000,000 in research. The total being spent on synthetic research by chemical factories is probably more than was the value of our national wool clip before the war." He said the tendency to breed crossbred types of sheep must be combatted if the Australian wool industry fras to hold its own. “Crossbred wool is most easily supplanted by synthetics. Carpet wools and coarser wools are very easily substituted. Merino type wools still stand up to synthetics.”