PROSPECT FOR WOOL

Press, Volume XCVII, Issue 28540, 20 March 1958, Page 12

PROSPECT FOR WOOL

Mr Wardell? s Assessment

(New Zealand Press Association) WELLINGTON, March 19.

Wool was one of the last commodities to be affected by the present recession, and there were reasons to hope it might be one of the first to recover, the chairman of the New Zealand Wool Board (Mr H. J. Wardell) said today. Mr Wardell was addressing the electoral college of the Meat and Wool Boards. A reduction in interest rates in the United Kingdom, which many had been expecting before now, would do much to bolster the trade, he said. f The economic prospects of the sheep industry, as revealed in the prices received for exports, made it essential that more attention be paid to cost structure. Some costs were beyond control, but others merited the closest attention. Mr Wardell said that his board was strongly of the opinion that it must use science and research not only to increase production but also to reduce costs. The board therefore continued to urge the extension of survey methods carried out in the Gisborne area under grants from the Meat and Wool Boards. It believed that these methods of surveying sheep and cattle populations and determining the nature and extent of losses caused by infertility and allied conditions should be extended progressively to other districts, and their scope widened.