‘Alarming decline’ in wool research

Press, 28 March 1979, Page 25

‘Alarming decline’ in wool research

An “alarming decline” in wool research around the world, had laken place in the last 10 years, said the director of research and development for the International Wool Secretariat, Dr Kenneth Baird, at Lincoln.

Many countries had redirected their efforts out of wool especially in Western Europe and Australia, South Africa and the United States, he said. There was now an inadequate back-up of basic chemical and physical research.

If a short-term view was taken of the industry Dr Baird said that this might appear not to have much significance, but in the longer term the wool processing technology that would be needed in ■ 20 years time should be based on research done now, and from that point

of view the outlook was very serious. Not enough money was available through the grower-controlled secretariat for research and development, and there were significant opportunities for additional exploitation of technology that they were missing out on, he said.

An example of an area that should be given much more attention to was the use of wool on new machinery developed for use of other fibres. Because wool constituted only about 5 per cent of the world domesic fibre market, most machine manufacturers were reluctant to develop machines for a fibre that represented such a small percentage of the field. So that wool would not be at a disadvantage in processing, more work

should be dope on nevi equipment for other fibres, he said.

The budget that was allocated to him by the I.W.S. was a proportion of the total budget of the secretariat that the managing director had to split up between branches around the world and headquarters groups, and every segment of the organisation had been feeling the effects of the restrictions. This was the outcome of inflation and also, in particular, the decline in the value of the currencies of the four grower countries whose contributions were made in their own currencies and then spent in 30 other countries, so that the relationship between the different currencies had a profound effect on spending power.