Future Of Wool “Looks Good”

Press, Volume CI, Issue 29766, 8 March 1962, Page 14

Future Of Wool “Looks Good”

“In the short range, the future of wool looks very good,” said Dr. J. H. Dusenbury, a leading American chemist specialising in wool structure, ’n Christchurch yesterday. The battle between wool and synthetic fibres was tied up with both price and aesthetics, he said. "It Is very difficult for man-made fibres to have the same properties as wool —like handle and draping characteristics Du Pont in the United States have gone to extraordinary lengths to duplicate the properties of wool fibre, but I doubt if you could ever duplicate wool: it is so complex ” Dr. Dusenbury was until recently associate research director at the Textile Research Institute, Princeton. New Jersey He is now employed by a private textile research organisation associated with 29 textile mills He described his own research as an effort to produce new fabrics, to “upgrade" woollens and worsteds and to counteract some of the deficiencies of the wool fibre

“We are trying to shrinkjfroof wool without any adverse effects on the fibre."

he said, “and we are Investigating the setting properties of wool. The success of manmade fibres in recent years has stimulated a lot of research in wool, and I think wool has held its own in recent years. “In the United States wool has held the same absolute consumption level, but in relation to the over-all consumption of textiles it has gone down. In the last year or two there appears to have been a tendency to reverse this trend. Synthetics Research “Time will tell, and already we know that some synthetics have not lived up to their promise. But the synthetics producers have large research programmes going, probably more in total than wool producers It would shake a wool man to walk through the Du Pont research laboratories.” Dr. Dusenbury-said no-one had yet been able to improve the “wrinkle performance” of wool at high humidities “Wool is not the best at high humidities, and that is an important area where more research could lead us” He said there were also conceivably some uses for

wool which had not yet been found. Responsibility for finding new uses rested in the United States with the Department of Agriculture’s utilisation research and development organisation, and work was also being done on those lines at the Western Regional Research Laboratory in Albany. California. “They have a very comnetent staff.” he said, “and they are working towards areas where we don’t even dream of using wool today ” Australian Research Dr. Dusenbury. who has been sent to Australia and New Zealand to get up-to-date with wool research in this part of the world, said he was even more impressed with the level of research than he had expected to be “I was very imoressed with the work of the C.5.1.R0 in Australia.” he said. “There is more eraniiasis here on fundamental lines of research, and major advances will come out of this tyne of approach " Dr Dusenbury visited the wool resea-ch laboratories at Lincoln College yesterday, and loft for a day’s visrt v to the Wool Industries Research Institute at Dunedin.