‘Synthetics Fighting Each Other9

Press, Volume CVI, Issue 31209, 5 November 1966, Page 1

‘Synthetics Fighting Each Other 9

Synthetics were “more or less fighting each other,” the deputy chairman of the South African Wool Board (Mr A. Paul) said in Christchurch yesterday. “Often where two dogs fight over a bone, the third dog goes off with it,” he said. Because of this, Mr Paul explained, he was cautiously optimistic about the future of wool. Synthetics were undercutting one another, he said.

New synthetics were being marketed and were confusing the consumer. Mr Paul said several of the world’s synthetics factories had closed. “We know of one big synthetics firm in the United Kingdom that has laid off a lot of workers,” he said. Office boys in the United States wanted to buy lightweight wool suits, because top executives wore wool. It was a status symbol. “It is our feeling that, by and large, when the world comes out of this economic recession which there is at the moment with credit restrictions and higher bank rates around the world, wool will be right back in the picture,” he said.

“This is because it is being kept there all the time by the International Wool Secretariat’s promotion effort.”

South Africa had a wool stabilisation scheme and held no stocks. The .scheme had been started about 10 years ago with a capital of £6 million. This had grown to a reserve fund of more than £l5 million. Today it was supported not only by the wool growers but by wool buyers, manufacturers and brokers. South Africa wanted to see Australia—the biggest wool producer in the world—evolve a similar scheme. This would assist South Africa, because it would help to stabilise the world market for fine wool. The secretariat would send a mission to Russia soon, said Mr Paul. Russia consumed all its own wool.

“We feel that if we can give the Russians technical assistance and assist them in the promotion of wool in Russia, then, if they increase production, they can absorb the wool and not possibly put large quantities of wool on the world market,” he said.

Mr Paul is a woolgrower, a member of the board of the secretariat and serves on the executive of the National Wool Growers’ Association of South Africa. He is also on the board of the South African Textile Research Institute. He has just attended the annual meeting of the secretariat in Melbourne. He was accompanied to Christchurch by a trade representative on the South African Wool Board (Mr V. F. McHattie). Yesterday they visited the Wool Research Organisation, the Wool Industries Research Institute and Lincoln College.