Optimistic view for N.Z. wool prices

Press, 27 June 1987, Page 12

Optimistic view for N.Z. wool prices

PA Wellington A significant decline in international wool availability and continuing demand for products made from New Zealand wools leads to an optimistic forecast for prices, says the chairman of the Wool Board, Mr Pat Morrison. “If, in the coming season, the world tried to buy the average amount of wool which it has acquired over the last four years, it couldn’t do so,” Mr Morrison told the meat and wool conference of Federated Farmers in Wellington. “The way that wool stocks had run down throughout the world, there would be about 100,000 fewer tonnes available for consumption, over the next four years, he said..

“Admittedly, the biggest part of the shortage will be in those finer wools which New Zealand doesn’t produce in any significant quantity.” Mr Morrison said that demand was more difficult to predict because of the great offtake in recent years of both China and Russia.

Mr Morrison praised the new international development of the wool-. tweed style of carpets because it was an exciting innovation with good market prospects. Growth in the futon trade in Japan and opportunities in the knitting wool and western Europe bedding markets were also cause for optimism, Mr Morrison said.

Woolgrowers and the Wool Board were quite capable of marketing New Zealand’s wool, and were doing so with obvious success, Mr Morrison said in response to recent criticisms of producer board marketing by the Undersecretary for Finance, Mr de Cleene. Mr Morrison accused Mr de Cleene of being “out of date and out of touch.”

He rejected Mr de Cleene’s criticism that farmers were not retailers and therefore corild not market their produce. “We’re now beginning to see our wool marketed in a manner which meets the exactitudes of modern textile processing requirements and matches the

sophistication of our competitors.”, “By ensuring that one of the world’s oldest fibres Is now one of its most modern, we’re ensuring the future of woolgrowing and associated wider benefits i for New Zealand," he said. j

Mr Moriisdn said woolgrowers were the only group in the yvool industry prepared to 5 commit .'a percentage of their , income to the industry’s over-all success — S7OM a year as a “self-imposed” levy. . .. ; “It’s the' woolgrowers who bear the brunt of industry burdens. They suffer the price discounts passed back.; down the chain as a result bf costplus mentalities.” ; Mr Morrison also criticised Mr. de .Cleene’s advice that producer boards should employ salesmen who knew the markets.

“It seems astonishing that Mr de Cleene should profess ignorance ?of the International Wool Secretariat — an organisation that has probably been the single most Important factor' in the successful survival of wool today.”