Marketing Of Wool

Press, Volume CX, Issue 32394, 5 September 1970, Page 12

Marketing Of Wool

Much-needed improvements in the handling of wool for sale in New Zealand are now in sight The president of the New Zealand Woolbuyers’ Association, Mr I. L. I. Mackay, recently announced that his association supports the principle of standard national wool types, backed by objective or scientific measurement of wool characteristics, and also, subject to certain safeguards, a reduction in the amount of wool that is shown to buyers before a sale. The importance of this statement is twofold: it endorses proposals by the Wool Board devised to make wool more attractive to the end user—who will, like the buyer, know more about the sort of product that he is getting—and it should also lead to a saving in handling costs. The belief that progress towards an improved system of selling wool can best be made through consultation among all the interests concerned is now being vindicated.

Australian wool growers are attacking their very similar problems in a different way. They now seem determined to make major changes in the marketing of their fibre in a relatively short time. A special committee of the Australian Wool Board has .recommended the setting up of a single marketing authority operating a flexible reserve price scheme. This proposal has encountered heavy opposition from overseas buyers of Australian wool and has threatened to upset the good relationships that are essential between seller and customer.

The New Zealand Wool Board, perhaps moving rather too slowly for the more impatient of its constituents, might yet be proved to have taken the wiser course. Certainly the board, which was last week joined by two new members, has no reason yet to revise its policy of making haste slowly, and of securing the co-operation of the international interests that buy this country’s wool in any changes in the handling and marketing of the product. The brokers, who are the link between the growers and the buyers and manufacturers, have been experimenting with new handling methods; and the Wool Research Organisation, working with the brokers, has been perfecting methods of appraising wool that will, to a large extent, substitute precise mechanical measurement for subjective human judgment. Their co-operative efforts should provide a sound basis for an improved marketing system.