Woolgrowing may become more precise art

Press, Volume CXI, Issue 32666, 23 July 1971, Page 18

Woolgrowing may become more precise art

For the sheepfarmer, it is bad enough that his wool fetches a low price; it is even worse when the customers will not tell him precisely what they want.

From Washington recently there came a strong hint that this long-standing complaint may soon be answered. The customers assembled for the fortieth annual conference of the International Wool Textile Organisation . . . 300 delegates from 21 countries. Their president, 43-year-old George Peltzer, of Belgium, said commercial and technical developments now enable the industry to indicate . . . "clearly and without sentiment” . . . which kinds of wool have the best chance of selling. Mr Peltzer made it plain he expected the sheep and the sheepfarmer to adapt to the requirements of the end product and not the other way about. The textile industry, he said “has to specify and obtain its raw materials in terms of its productive requirements. It is no longer ■ matter of adapting endproducts to the raw mater-

He made two other comments that will register with New Zealand crossbred wool growers: first, that the speed of modem machinery requires uniformity in raw materials. Second, that improvements in cloth finishing techniques make possible the use of coarser fibres with comparable results. Mr Peltzer was interviewed recently by Bevan Burgess, a New Zealander on the staff of the International Wool Secretariat. This is Mr Burgess's report: Georges Peltzer is a dynamic young Belgian industrialist, who combines the skill of a diplomat with the sharp commerical brain of an international businessman. He sees himself as a representative of the new generation in the wool industry. He was bom into a family wool textile firm founded in 178 S. Today Peltzer et Fils, is a huge vertically-integrated combine using man-made fibres as well as wool.

Educated in England and trained in the mills of his ancestors, he broadened his experience in both Australia and South America. “I don’t see the elements of wool’s disappearance from the textile market,” he says, “because I don’t see any synthetic fibre with wool's properties. “But there are facts of life which must be faced by the industry and the growers against the background of our evolving western industrial civilisation.” As he sees it, man I", transforming himself from a manual labourer into a supervisor of machines, which become faster and faster and more complex. Such machines require predictable raw materials. “It’s no longer enough merely to make wool yam or cloth. One must produce closely specified products at stated prices,” he says. “To do this, we need a much mnrp lennw.

ledge of wool as a raw material.” As an illustration of trends in the industry today, Mr Peltzer talks of| remedying faults in yam.i Traditionally girls mended i the finished woven cloth with needles. Now automatic yam! winding machines have] been fitted with electronic fault detectors which stop the winder, break the defective length, and rejoin the broken ends. But such machines equally automatically provide detailed information about the frequency of faults. They have created an immediate back-pressure on spinners to eliminate the faults during yam manufacture. Inevitably, this has increased the demands made on the raw material, wool, in an effort to improve quality and transformation costs. Just as mending of woven cloth is becoming uneconomic in textile mills, sort-

ing is a very costly operation for raw wool.

Any improvement in animal husbandry, if it produces more evenness of quality or length, is absolutely vital to wool-using Industries.

He admits there have been frequent complaints from growers claiming that woblbuyers refuse to pay any premium for wools with such qualities.

“It is a problem,” he says "that the auction system can camouflage long-term trends in the wool market. This happens because not every textile mill is at the same stage of evolution. You can still do things in Spain which are no longer possible in Germany, and people are buying for both countries.

"Nevertheless, the longterm trend Is clear. In the end, the truth will return to the surface, as quality reasserts its full importance. Efforts at the sheep end will be rewarded all along the line.”

He believes, quality is equally important for the carpet trade though he admits that carpets are not his special field.

"There may be more leeway, but the carpet trade is evolving very fast machines with strict yam requirements. It is also dyeing made-up carpet with increasing frequency, and this makes requirements on

the evenness of the wool,” . he says. Looking into the future, Mr Peltzer sees the possibility of quite dramatic and helpful developments at the wool-growing end of the industry. Over the years, the sheep has been succesfully adapted to many soils and climates. He sees no reason why it could not also be adapted to changes in ecomonic circumstances. Perhaps this might be ‘ easier with a living thing than with man-made products, he says.