‘Mistake’ To Keep Wool

Press, Volume CVII, Issue 31383, 31 May 1967, Page 3

‘Mistake’ To Keep Wool

(N.Z. Press Association)

AUCKLAND, May 30. It was a grave mistake almost a national calamity —to stockpile wool instead of releasing it to the world market, Mr M. P. McDermott, manag-ing-director of Raymond Dale, Ltd., one of the leading exporters of wool, said today.

The trade in crossbred wool should have been kept alive instead of being put in a “cocoon” by Jhe Wool Commission, which was expected to be holding wool worth £3O million at the end of the season next month.

Mr McDermott said that the commission’s . floor price, which had set out to be an excellent support price scheme for the farmer, was turning into a national catastrophe. Four months ago, he was taken to task by the Auckland Woolbrokers’ Association for suggesting that it was stupid of some people in the

industry to say that wool would be right. “As far as I can gauge, the market, wool is down and just out,” he said. The professor of agricultural economics at Lincoln College, Professor B. P. Philpott, described Mr McDermott’* remarks at that time as irresponsible. Today, Mr McDermott said the position of New Zealand crossbred wools was even worse than four months ago and the future was anything but bright. The failure of crossbred wool to make a recovery could be placed fairly and squarely on synthetics, which had

made a sudden and phenomenal breakthrough. They would continue to be a major factor against New Zealand wools. “It seems ironical," said Mr McDermott, “that at a time when synthetics are being grossly over-produced, the very competition of which they are frightened New Zealand crossbred wool—has all but been withdrawn from the world market. * “In other words, a trader who in the past regularly bought New Zealand wool has been driven to seek an alternative commodity to manufacture—synthetics.” He said that one of his firm’s best customers in the United States for crossbred wool for carpet manufacture had switched, to synthetics and a small quantity of South American wool.

If past experience was anything to go by, he would not be back for New Zealand wool.

Australian woolgrowers had rejected a floor price scheme and today most of their clip had been cleared at world prices. At the same time, their wool was being kept before the manufacturers of the world.