“Synthetics Beating Wool In Japan”

Press, Volume CVIII, Issue 31835, 13 November 1968, Page 18

“Synthetics Beating Wool In Japan”

Synthetic fibres were beating wool fibres in Japan, Mr Y. Fujita, a member of a party of 12 manufacturers from Japan, said in Christchurch yesterday.

Synthetics was a large and dynamic industry in Japan, he said. Wool faced a very big job to recover its lost market. Mr Fujita is the kimono promotion officer with the merchandise division of the International Wool Secretariat in Nagoya. He said that 10 per cent of the wool consumption in Japan went into wool kimonos. If they were to buy more New Zealand wool, the Japanese would have to examine carefully the technological background of using coarse wools for kimonos.

“It depends on the industry situation in Japan,” he said. “It depends on technological advances and on the price of the wool.”

The leader of the Japanese party (Mr H. Toyoshima) said that the mission had visited various kinds of carpet laboratories in New Zealand. If some of this technology for making carpets out of coarse wools could be used in Japan, then Japan might be able to buy much larger quantities of coarse New Zealand crossbred wools.

Mr Toyoshima said that with Japan’s growing affluence it could afford to buy more. At the moment one Japanese in 10 owned a car. By 1980, one Japanese in three might own a car.

The Japanese manufacturers left for Australia yesterday after visiting the Wool Research Organisation at Lincoln.