CROSSBRED WOOL

Dominion, Volume 23, Issue 103, 25 January 1930, Page 12

CROSSBRED WOOL

FURTHER FALL IN PRICES VIEW OF MANUFACTURER “BOTTOM NOT TOUCHED” That crossbred wool has not yet touched bottom, and that prices may sag a little further was the opinion expressed by an English woollen manufacturer, Lieutenant-Colonel Sir Emmanuel Hoyle, Bart., 0.8. E., who arrived at Wellington last night by the Rangitane from Southampton. He explained that a good deal of wool was still held up in South America by outside speculators who bought last year, it not having gone into the market or consumption. Supply and demand, he pointed out, were the only two factors that would govern the price of wool. Sir Emmanuel is the principal of the firm of Joseph Hoyle and Son, Ltd., of Longwood, Huddersfield. The bulk of the manufacturing people, he said, lost money with the big drops in wool. They had had to carry too much of the responsibility and had not been supported by the people producing it. His firm had four mills at Huddersfield working night and day, but it was only by going to fetch the wool from all parts of the world that the mills could be kept going. The competition from synthetic silks and substitutes had had an effect on wool, but it was only “a flash in the pan,” and wool was not going to be driven out but would settle down to normal usage. The woollen mills were now producing clothes to answer the demand in light-weight fabrics. “I am out here to spend a good deal of money in buying wool if the price suits me,” said Sir Emmanuel. “We use the product of over a million sheep in our factories.” After explaining that he was of opinion that crossbred had not yet touched bottom, Sir Emmanuel said that we were only just getting rid of wool textile articles produced at an enormous rate during the war, some of which were still in existence to a very great extent. He believed that wool would come into its own. “There is very little difference between the boom and the slump,” continued Sir Emmanuel. “The slump comes unexpectedly and the boom is just the same. There is only a five per cent difference between a boom and a slump.” Pre-War Days. Sir Emmanuel Hoyle annually undertakes an extensive selling tour in the interests of his firm. After his visit to New Zealand he will proceed to Australia, and probably to South America. “I shall be guided by circumstances,” he said. “I never start away to go to such and 'such places. I changed my route three times on my last trip. When I left, it was with the intention of going to New Zealand. I finished up in Japan! In pre-war days manufacturers got business easily by staying at home and sending a few patterns to some shipper in Bradford, Manchester, or London, who, possibly—certainly in many instances — was of a foreign nationality. Such shippers were largely German. “Competition is now keener, and many of the Continental countries, owing to '.poverty in those countries, haye gone, and are goinj* further afield, and have been exploiting many markets, which were previously exclusively British, at the expense of British manufacturers. The large business we manufacturers used to do through Home shippers, and also through some very large shipping houses on the Continent, vanished with the war, and manufacturers have had to start and build up from a new source and with new methods. British textile manufacturers and other manufacturers in the' British Isles .certain!” suffered as a result of losing the outlet through the shipping firms to which I have refered. “Take it or Leave It.”

“Having carefully considered the position, I felt that the only thing to do was to visit different countries, and find out what they wanted, and in my early voyages I discovered very serious competition from Czecho-Slovakia, France, Italy and Germany. I also learned, after finding out what different countries wanted, that if reasonable competition could be put forward, there was always a preference for British goods. This preference exists in every market in the world. Of course, the old idea: ‘That is what I have to offer and that you must take’ has got to be eliminated by British manufacturers, and they must be prepared to make what a man or a country wants, and to serve it up in the way it is desired it should be served up. _ In certain markets, bearing this in. mind, I have been able practically to drive out foreign competition.” It still remained a universal truism. Sir went on to say, that an Englishman’s word was regarded as his bond, and this was greatly to the benefit of British manufacturers who were prepared to find out what was required in the markets of the world and to meet those requirements. “The reason is sjmply this. . Some of the countries in competition with us do not deliver the goods according to sample. People in different countries which I have visited have told me repeatedly, after having had such an experience, that they would get no more goods from those countries, if they could get them from us. The reputation of many European countries, does not stand as high as the British does. Conditions in England are gradually improving and have been doing so all the time imperceptibly—not with a great big boom which is not desirable. Conditions in England are better than any time since the boom of 1920.”