THE PRESS THURSDAY, JANUARY 9, 1986. Selling more wool to China

Press, 9 January 1986, Page 14

THE PRESS THURSDAY, JANUARY 9, 1986. Selling more wool to China

China has emerged rapidly as a giant among the world’s importers of wool. Since 1978, China’s importation of raw wool has increased more than fivefold. The reason, of course, is China’s vast textile industry, so important to the country’s economy that the Chinese have a Minister and a Vice-Minister of Textile Industry among their Ministers of State. So important is China’s textile industry to the wool-growing countries of the world, that the International Wool Secretariat created a new post in China in October last year and filled it with one of its most senior directors. The I.W.S. also licensed some Chinese manufacturers to use the Woolmark.

For New Zealand, the rapid growth and modernisation of China’s textile industry has meant a corresponding growth in opportunities to sell wool and wool technology. The New Zealand industry has not been slow to act. During the last dozen years or so, local wool ;exporters and the New Zealand Wool Board have made a concentrated effort to reserve for New Zealand a large slice of the Chinese cake. The simplest measure of their success is that China is now New Zealand’s biggest customer for wool, taking between $lOO million and $l5O million of the New Zealand clip each year. The trade has fluctuated a little from year to year, but the trend consistently has been upwards. A further important step in the

development of this relationship was the shipment this week of 250 tonnes of scoured wool from Timaru to Shanghai. The shipment was the first under a joint-venture arrangement with the Chinese to scour about 4000 tonnes of wool a year at the Washdyke scouring plant for export to China. The Washdyke plant is the first overseas venture of any sort by the Chinese textile industry and speaks volumes for the regard in which New Zealand’s wool technology is held in China. This respect is largely the result of Chinese familiarity with New Zealand technical expertise in supplying and setting up scouring plants in China, arrangements that already have had the bonus of guaranteeing New Zealand the right to supply the raw wool for the Chinese factories.

The Washdyke venture should be worth about $l5 million a year to New Zealand in export receipts. Perhaps more important, it confirms a trend evident in recent seasons that scoured wool is forming a bigger and bigger part of New Zealand’s wool exports. Last season scoured wool accounted for about 11 per cent of all exports. These are value-added exports, earning more for New Zealand than would the export of the unprocessed wool, and providing extra jobs for New Zealanders. The Washdyke venture, established under intense competition from several Australian companies, is just beginning to pay off.