Farmers Hear Address By Woollen Mills’ Head

Press, Volume CII, Issue 30216, 22 August 1963, Page 20

Farmers Hear Address By Woollen Mills’ Head

In a country the size of New Zealand, the woollen industry could not completely cover the requirements of the whole market, and it had never claimed to be able to do so, the president of the New Zealand Woollen Mills’ Association (Mr G. W. Lane, of Dunedin) said in an address to North Canterbury Federated Farmers yesterday.

Even if the industry could meet all the country’s requirements it would refuse to accept 100 per cent import exclusion. “We have never claimed to be able to supply the extreme novelty end of the market in such a small country, where any particular novelty pattern will stand out,” Mr Lane said.

“The Wool Board conveniently forgets our repeated statements in this regard, and proclaims as a brand-new and original thought that the New Zealand mills cannot dothis.”

Last year one and a quarter square yards of woollen cloth for every person in New Zealand was imported. That should be sufficient to cover all the novelty cloths required in the country. “The trouble is that quite a large proportion of that yardage is imported in grades and classes of cloth which we can make identical in appearance and in many cases of better quality, but the imports have an advantage in price,” Mr Lane said.

New Zealand’s production last year was 60 per cent of the market.

Sources Of Supply One of the disadvantages under which the woollen industry in the country was working was the limited sources of supplies of wool. New Zealand was restricted to importing from only four Australian states, whereas Britain could import raw wool from any country.

Also, the New Zealand mills had to purchase a year's supply over a. period of a few months, which involved a very large amount of capital.

“However, the woolgrowers of New Zealand would soon be aware if the local mills were not there to support the market at auctions,” Mr Lane said. The contention that the use of raw wool had decreased in New Zealand under import control was totally wrong. Figures issued in support of this confined themselves to piecegoods and completely ignored that the use of rawwool was not confined to piecegoods, but was also included in the production of both hand and machine knitting yarns. . “I would say the average New Zealand mill buys more new machinery each year

than its British counterpart of equal size,” he said. For the period from January, 1958, to June, 1964, the figure of new plant installed could be taken as £3m. "We have a higher proportion of automatic looms to non-automatic looms than Great Britain. A full installation of automatic looms would certainly give us a higher production, but would make us far too inflexible in the types of cloth we produce,” Mr Lane said. Use Of Synthetics

Synthetic mixtures were the coming thing, and the local mills had kept very well abreast of these advances. In many cases, the admixture was a small percentage, with wool predominant. “If we had confined ourselves to all-wool cloths we would have been accused of inability to keep pace with modern trends,” Mr Lane said.

Some time ago, the then chairman of the Wool Board said the mills were not loyal to wool. It was not generally known that at that time, when wool prices were depressed, the New Zealand mills could have obtained, in Australia, tops at the same cost as the clean content of their purchases of New Zealand wool. “We remained loyal to the New Zealand farmer, but received no thanks for it.” MiLane said.

Concluding his address. Mr Lane said the New Zealand woollen industry was inherently and by tradition a processor of New Zealand virgin wools.

“We use every effort to meet the demand of the public in supplying woollen products, and where demanded we blend a percentage of synthetic fibres with wool and extend the uses of virgin wool. Our staff, of some 4000. are operating our most modern plant to produce goods which in their own class will compare than favourably with those from overseas countries.’’ Mr Lane said.