Test fault

Press, 1 May 1981, Page 17

Test fault

The executive manager of the New Zealand Woolbuyers' Association, Mr W. E. Carter, is unhappy about the testing of wool for fineness or fibre diameter. He told a seminar on the measurement and marketing of crossbred wools in Christchurch last week that this was one of the most urgent areas that they had to deal with in the presale and post-sale testing of raw wool. Mr Carter said he had some serious reservations on the application of the airflow method of measurement to crossbred wool, particularly where it was coarser than 33 microns.

While at micron levels up to, say, 28 microns the precision of the test bore some relationship to trading tolerances that was far from the case as the wool got coarser. Importers were requiring certificates of fineness determined by air-flow at micron levels where the precision of the test made trading tolerances spurious. In the short term, he said that his association had taken the initiative in' commissioning the combing of three calibration tops of 36, 38 and 40 microns for use by test houses in New Zealand and hopefully also their overseas counterparts. But this was a stop-gap measure that would not be a cure.

“If our overseas customers are going to require micron certificates on crossbred wools, we must satisfy that

requirement, but we must make every effort to ensure that the testing is of the precision required to be able to issue a certificate that has some real relativity with trading tolerances,” he said.

Mr Carter said that he was quite satisfied with testing and certification for yield and vegetable matter in wool.