Wool Plans Factor Behind Price Rise

Press, Volume CIII, Issue 30339, 15 January 1964, Page 14

Wool Plans Factor Behind Price Rise

(New Zealand Press Association) WELLINGTON, January 14. The International Wool Secretariat’s annual £l3-million promotion and research budget for the next five years had been a contributing factor in recent wool price rises, said Sir William Gunn today.

“We have doubled our budget in the last two years and this has shown buyers we ar.e prepared to help sell our wool,” said Sir William Gunn, who is chairman of the secretariat. “I think this has given them confidence and has had a slight influence on recent price levels.” Sir William Gunn, who is also chairman of the Australian Wool Board, is here for the Secretariat board meeting which begins tomorrow. He said the secretariat would continue to promote only pure wool goods. It was hot prepared to put its money into the promotion of wool-synthetic compounds. *‘We acknowledge the mixtures are here to stay. We do not necessarily frown on them, but we will not support them.’’ The secretariat was not prepared to admit that woolsynthetic compounds could do a better job than pure wool unless this was proved by its own research—“although we may have come pretty near to that with socks.” “A few years ago everybody though pure-wool

trousers could not be permanently creased. Now some manufacturers who changed over to synthetics are going back to pure wool because it can be permanently creased.” An international “quality mark” for pure-wool goods will soon be in use, the secretariat’s managing director, Mr W. J. Vines, said today.