Asia Great Potential Market For Wool

Press, Volume C, Issue 29610, 5 September 1961, Page 8

Asia Great Potential Market For Wool

By reason of its teeming millions Asia may well be a great future market for wool. Already in total it is a sizeable user of the commodity. Speaking to the wool field day held at Staveley last week Mr H. R. Evans, a farm advisory officer (economics) of the Department of Agriculture, said it appeared that the Asian countries were already by far the biggest users of wool that went into cloth making. "Although they use less per head than any of the more developed areas the populations are so targe that their total consumption is over one quarter of the world total,” said Mr Evans. “Now they use less than a pound of wool per person in a year. In tact it is probably about half a pound.

“The most interesting part, however, is that the variation in the use of wool seems to follow very closely on the level of prosperity in the country concerned. Hong Kong, which is a prosperous trading city, used eight times as much wool as the average for Asia, and here, possibly, is the key to the . future of our woollen industry. As the standard of living in these countries rises the demand for wool is going to rise almost as fast, and with about half the total world population there could, and should be, a rapid expansion in the demand in this area to use up increases in both wool and synthetic production." Mr Evans emphasised that in the Western world this was an age of slick advertising and cut-throat competition, and wool interests had to be active in advertising and promotion, but in the underdeveloped regions any method of increasing standards of living would be more effective in increasing demand than all the advertising in the world. Mr L. P. Chapman, a member of the Wool Board, said in the course of discussion that high living standards did not always necessarily involve greater use of wool—for instance widespread use of central heating in American homes. While Mr Evans had mentioned that in the last .10 years wool had lost ground to synthetics, Mr B. H. Pridie, of Methven, said that in 195960 production in the world had in,fact been at a record level. It was impossible to expect wool to take up the whole demand for fibres. There was a place both for synthetics and wool and mixtures of wool and other materials. Dr. A. E. Henderson, reader in wool at Canterbury Agricultural College, said

that more money could be spent on wool research and promotion but the weak link seemed to be in the application of this at the manufacturer and retailer level—the persuasion of the manufacturer to use wool instead of some other fibre and the persuasion of the retailer to sell a woollen garment instead of another. Wool interests could not expect the business world to give weight to patriotism or goodwill. It bad to ba remembered that the*ret*ller did not care what article he sold so long as he got his margin of profit.