Testing time for wool objective measurement

Press, 5 October 1984, Page 25

Testing time for wool objective measurement

Objective measurement of wool and its certified description for sale has a long way to go yet, the chairman of the New Zealand Council of Wool Exporters, Mr Michael Moss, has said.

Mr Moss was speaking at the annual conference in Christchurch of the council. Other speakers included the general managers of the Wool Testing Authority and Wool Testing Services, Messrs Stephen Fookes and Geoff Clark respectively, the leader of the measurement and testing group at the Wool Research Organisation, Dr Alan Edmunds, and the general manager, industry services, of the Wool Board, Mr Roger Buchanan. Mr Moss said that bulk, length and strength of wool could not yet be tested for

certification. “When these factors are overcome, we will be able to contemplate and accept sale by description but until that day comes it is the buyer who has to put his money where his mouth is and guarantee to his client the specifications of the wool which are not tested,” he said.

Mr Buchanan, of the Wool Board, also issued a statement this week welcoming the introduction of colour testing. “The latest objective measurement test for colour — or the whiteness, brightness and bloom of wool — gives a value after the wool has been washed clean of impurities,” said Mr Buchanan.

“Even apparently slight variations of whiteness can cause a headache for dyers. Dyes are colour additive and wool can not be made lighter by adding colour.

This becomes criticial with light or pastel shades. “However,” he said, “the good quality of the New Zealand clip, particularly its colour, is already recognised by manufacturers world wide and the use of colour measurement can only serve to highlight this advantage further. “There are real benefits for the woolgrowers as well,” said Mr Buchanan. In combination with the other objective tests, colour measurement forms part of a package that will describe wool in manufacturing terms and will lead to total specification of the product. Both the grower and the manufacturer will be able to relate to each other using the same language. Mr Moss said that bulk in wool could not at present be certified and he encouraged W.R.O.N.Z. to continue its work towards an acceptable test method. Considerable work was being done in Australia on certifying of length and strength said Mr Moss and Mr Fookes, but the equipment being devised might not be applicable to New Zealand.

The main problem was

that length and strength in greasy wool had a poor, relationship to processing strength, said Mr Fookes.

He had been told that a test in Australia would be available next year but at a cost of $22 per sample. He urged the New Zealand industry to put more money and effort into such development of length and strength testing. Mr Fookes also predicted that it would be one or two years, and possibly four, before a commercial bulk test was available.

New Zealand just did not spend enough in research, he said, compared with Australia where millions of dollars of trust funds were injected into wool research each year. He suggested that the expansion of wool testing towards full objective measurement and sale by description had reached a plateau and he couldn’t see much real progress being made for a few years. “Perhaps the industry is going to need wool buyers for a few more years yet,” said Mr Moss.

Dr Edmunds, from W.R.0.N.Z., also repeated his concerns about the prob-

lems with the airflow measurement of fibre diametre. Anomalies arise in medulated wools and with lamb wools.

These problems were illustrated earlier in the conference by Mr Clark who showed a Drysdale staple which had measured about 30 microns on the airflow method but was nearer 40 microns.

Dr Edmunds said the industry could expect an improved method of. measuring diameter but he would not elaborate.

He confirmed that W.R.O.N.Z. had a number of large testing projects pressing for attention, such as the need for a length and strength test, but that there was little prospect of large injections of funds out of the present W.R.O.N.Z. budget.

Mr Moss also predicted within a year or so that information on wool could be transferred electronically from the time it is received into the broker’s store from the grower, until shipping documents are produced, without any intermediate use of paper.