Markets For Wool In Asian Region

Press, Volume CIII, Issue 30366, 15 February 1964, Page 18

Markets For Wool In Asian Region

r pHE International Wool -*• Secretariat has its eyes on Asian countries as potential markets for wool and woollen goods. And according to its director of market development for the Asian region outside Japan, Mr J. F. Hopkins, a former Australian hosiery manufacturer, markets for wool and New Zealand wool are already opening up in these regions. Because 82 per cent of New Zealand’s wool production was under 52’s count Mr Hopkins said that approval in recent months for the modernisation of certain sections of the Indian hosiery industry should be of patricular interest to this country. It should, he said, represent an increasing outlet for New Zealand wools. For its raw material imports Mr Hopkins said that Indian industry had to earn its own foreign exchange and India was directing a great deal of attention to developing markets in the Soviet Union and in East European countries. These represented rapidly expanding markets for products, including those made out of wool. The Indian . importer was allowed to import to the extent of the invoice value

of his exports and this meant that he could import more wool than that contained in the woollen products that he exported. Inside India itself, he said that there was a demand for woollen products, particularly in the. colder northern regions of the country, which was at present largely unsatisfied. It could be four times the amount of wool that India now had the foreign exchange to purchase. In Hong Kong Mr Hopkins said that there had recently been a 224 per cent increase in the consumption of tops in the knitting industry and this rate of development was likely to be maintained. Tops were being imported from Bradford, Japan and Australia and quite a large proportion of the Bradford purchases would be of New Zealand wool. Mr Hopkins said that the greatest opportunities for wool in his region were in China, India and Hong Kong, in that order, but he was reluctant to talk about market possibilities in China. Within the next 10 years he predicted a rapid growth of consumption in these areas. The secretariat’s policy for developing these markets centred round providing

: industry with technical service and product development techniques. There was no place for promotion in these areas as the potential for consumption far exceeded the capacity to buy.