Belief In I.W.S. Largely Act Of Faith

Press, Volume CIX, Issue 32215, 6 February 1970, Page 7

Belief In I.W.S. Largely Act Of Faith

PART I Long before I made this trip I was convinced of the worth of this self-help or do-it-yourself project, and I have come back more than ever sure of this.

I know that it is very difficult to measure the worth of the work of this sort of organisation in dot lars and cents, but I think it is not impossible to visualise wool being an almost forgotten fibre today but for the efforts of the International Wool Secretariat in the fields of research, product development, technical service, and promotion. To a very great extent I think that belief in the secretariat. must be an act of faith. One of my colleagues has said since his return that it is very hard to explain the I.W.S. to growers. It may be difficult to describe the detail of the I.W.S. to growers, but I think that the whole concept of the organisation is logical and perfectly easy to catch on to. Advertising or promotion is very much a part of the world today. It is really as simple as this—unless you advertise and keep your product and your name in < front of the public you are likely to slip into relative oblivion. But the LW.S. is much more than a glorified advertising agency. Very much of its work on the promotion side involves persuasion at the manufacturing and retail levels, the advertising then being the means of justifying that persuasion in the actual sale of goods. Research is also an integral part of the wool story for with all of its virtues wool is under heavy pressure from man-made fibres, which in the past, at least, have had important advantages, particularly in easy care characteristics I would suggest that in this respect they are not likely to continue to hold the advantage—but those people who are working with manmade fibres are obviously going to be straining to constantly improve them and narrow the gap between them and wool in other respects, so that the task of upgrading wool as a fibre is an important one. The other prong of the secretariat’s three-pronged operation is in the field of

product development and technical service. It is obvi. ously not of benefit to woolgrowers if research findings lie in a pigeonhole somewhere and never reach the market place or industry. The recently completed technical centre of the secretariat at Ilkley, in Yorkshire, close to the heart of the British textile industry, is the main place where the secretariat is taking re-

The writer of the accompanying article, who is a member of the staff of “The Press,” late last near visited branches of the International Wool Secretariat in Hona Kona. Japan. Sweden. Denmark. West Germany and France, the headquarters of the secretariat in Britain, and the American arm of the secretariat, the Wool Bureau in New "York. The trip was made in company with three other New Zealand journalists under the auspices of the Wool Board. This article is the first of a series of articles summarising this representative’s impressions of the flying trip.

search results and translating them into processes that can be applied in industry. In this particular enterprise the I.W.S. has invested something like 52.5 m in buildings and equipment These new processes are followed into industry and are subject to evaluations in which the technicians of the secretariat work alongside mill people to iron out the inevitable bugs that are associated with these developments. Also based at Ilkley is the manufacturing services section under a Swede, Dr A. Johnels. who is an expert in textile engineering. This section has the purpose of helping the textile industry throughout the world, in places like the Soviet Union, Poland and Jugoslavia, as well as in western countries, to use wool more efficiently on their machines so that the manufacturer makes more money, the wool product becomes more competitive with the synthetic article and in the final ananlysis. one hopes that the demand for wool will be increased and the woolgrower on his farm will also benefit. An Australian, Dr J. R. McPhee, who heads the Ilkley centre, says that it is there to work for the wool industry of the world and supporting it in this enterprise are also centres and laboratories like those at Ichinomyia, near the important textile centre of Nagoya in Japan, and at Woodbury near New York in the United States. Let me mention at this stage just one project that the centre at Ilkley is working on. It is in the all important field of shrinkproofing. It is a combination of fiat setting, use of a resin additive, and then permanent creasing using the wellknown Siroset process. This sort of process can be applied o men’s suits so that they can be thrown into a washing machine and do not require to be ironed when they' come out. Dr Gerald Laxer, an American who is director of product development and technical service for the 1.W.5., said recently that suits, trousers and skirts treated in this way were now being test marketed in

Britain. The treatment, he said, would add about 2s to 2s 6d to the price of a yard of fabric and about 3s to a pair of trousers and about 5s to a jacket. The technique was also to be used by Burlington Industries in the United States, the biggest textile manufacturers in the world. The process could also earn a royalty for the 1.W.5., which would go towards offsetting the cost of more staff needed to teach the technology at the industrial evaluation and test marketing stages. Speaking of future developments in the wool textile field Dr Later said that everything made out of wool would have to be easy-care oriented, and because in the past people had associated wool with needing special care it was going to take a lot of effort to educate people in what could be done with wool. Because crossbred wool production is so important to New Zealand it featured very much in our conversations with I.W.S. personnel and even if at this stage prices may seem depressingly low for these wools, it is gratifying to find that at least there seems to be a mounting demand for them, for which the secretariat can claim some credit, and in the medium to long term this

in itself should generate some strengthening of the market. That the I.W.S. was able, when the crisis developed for crossbred wools two or three years ago. to divert a major part of its resources in support of these wools is a measure of the flexibility of the organisation and an indication that it is not dominated by regional interests. It is important for the New Zealand farmer to know that the new 7 managing director of the LW.S., Mr A. C. B. Maiden, said recently that the secretariat was devoting about 30 per cent of its resources to support of New Zealand crossbred wools when this country was contributing about 24 per cent of the secretariat’s budget. It is also worth mentioning that some 20 per cent of expenditure in salaries and materials at Ilkley in the product development field is going into the carpet field and that a similar proportion of the centre’s capital equipment is involved in this effort. That New Zealand is getting a pretty good deal at Ilkley was stressed by Dr Laxer when he noted that while everything being done there was applicable to New Zealand wools, the work on carpet wool was of little benefit to Australian or South African growers. (To be continued.)