MANUFACTURE OF WOOL

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume LXVI, 22 June 1932, Page 6

MANUFACTURE OF WOOL

MANY PROCESSES INVOLVED

RECONCILING COSTS AND RETAIL PRICES

REPLY TO MINISTER’S CRITICISM

Although improved machinery has standardised the manufacture of most of the necessities of life and reduced their cost- to the consumer, the process of transferring wool from the sheep’s back to tho back of the public is still long, intricate, and costly (says the Christchurch Press”). Many neople have been unable to understand why the farmer gets only lOd or lid for a pound of wool which sells in the shops, ready for knitting, for from 9s to 10s; and this difference is difficult to account for without some knowledge of the many professes through which the wool passes before it is transformed from tlrck, greasy tuits into a smooth, coloured yarn. No fewer than 46 .distinct operations are involved in the manufacture of some woollen cloths, and in almost every operation there is some shrinkage or loss through waste. Even the ordinary knitting wool has to pass through more than a dozen processes before it is ready for the retailor; and here, 100, there is waste and loss of weight all the way. Manufacturers and retailors alike deny the charge of the Minister for Infernal Affairs (the Hon. A. Hamilton), that there is too great a disparity between the retail price of wool and the price that the promary producers receive lor it. The Minister said that while two pounds of raw wool, costing Is on an average, would easily make a pound of knitting wool, the best knitting wool could not be bought retail for less than 18s a pound, nor the cheapest first-grade for less than 10s. These figures are said to be entirely wrong. According to the manager of the Kaiapoi Woollen Manufacturing Company, Ltd. (who arranged for an inspection of the Kaiapoi Mills by “The Press’ ), even this year the cost of wool suitable for the best knitting yarn was from 10(1 to lid a pound, while the retail price is to-day between 9s and 10s a pound, or 7JUI an ounce skein. The wool at 18s a pound he described as the finest English imported wool used only for special purposes. A prominent retailer pointed out, that the fall in the price of New Zealand manufactured wools had been phenomenal during the past year. He declared that the Minister was quite ignorant of the real position, and denied emphatically that retailers were making anything hut a small margin of profit on the sale of wool.

FROM FARM TO SHOP

It is a long way from the shearingshed to the wool counter of a City shop ; and to the tailoring department it is longer still. As the wool makes its journey it is tossed and torn about incessantly. It is sold, classed, scoured, carded, combed, drawn, spun, woven, dyed, finished, placed in a warehouse, bought again, sold again. Finally, it- may be placed on sale as knitting wool; or it may go through more stages of manufacture and he woven into a worsted cloth. Each machine process takes a little from (he original pound of wool; there are losses all the time, never gains. The costs of labour are superimposed. Hands put the wool into tho lorry at the shearing shed, into the trucks at the railway station, into the lorry for the woolstore. The broker has his share. Then the handling begins again; and this all before the wool lias even reached the mills.

Once the processing begins in the mills, the wool itself starts to waste a wav. A pound is reduced to perhaps half a pound, perhaps less, before it is ready for knitting-needles or a suit. The loss in weight depends on the season and the 1 quantity of foreign stuff in the wool—the -•’•ease dirt, seeds, burrs, and vegetable matter from the grazing field. On arrival af the mills the wool is graded and sorted into different qualities. This is an important and highly skilled work, for on the proner sorting of the wool depends the quality of tilt finished article. Then it goes to the scouring room, where all natural fats and dirt are removed in large tanks each containing hundreds of gallons of hot, scouring liquid. Here the greasy wool loses from 30 to 60 per cent, of its weight .

LOSSES IN CARDING

If it is required for white goods the wool is dried and returned to the clean wool store; if for coloured, it goes first to the dye-house. At. this stage also the materials arc blended according to the quality of texture required. Where secondary colours are required, the different shades of wool are skilfully blended. In the carding department the wool is brushed on a series of revolving rollers until its texture is perfectly even and the fibres are completely mixed. As these fibres are mingled together the wool for the first time assumes the form of a thread. There are further losses hero; lor some of the fibres elog into the teeth ol the rollers and others are rejected because they are too short. This soft thread is passed on to the spinning department, where it is drawn out finer to a pre-dctermined thickness and receives sufficient thickness to strengthen it and convert it into a workable yarn. Threads for the manufacture of worsted have to he' combed out and twisted by separate processes.

THE FINISHING TOUCHES

The evolution of the wosted cloth or blanket is now about half.accomplished. The wool is warned and drawn, and the yarn required for the weft is wound on to special bobbins. Weaving is the next process by which the weft yarn is interlaced across the warp in such a way as to form a definite pattern —checks in rugs, or coloured headings for blankets. All pieces are then examined by an expert staff, whose duty it is to remove loose ends or knots and repair flaws. The finishing process comprises milling, scouring, carbonising, drying, and pressing. The milling process reduces the length and width of the cloth, felts the fibres together, and makes the cloth firm and durable. Finally, after being thoroughly scoured and cleansed for the second time, some cloths such as blankets receive a light hrushing-np to draw the short fibres to the surface and give* them a “woolly” appearance, w,hilo other cloths such as worsteds pass through a cropping machine which cuts the short fibres cleanly away. Approximately seven pounds of wool are used to make the suit length ol 3 1-4 yards, blit by the time the stuff is ready for the suit it may weight less than three pounds. The English computation is that 7.11 b weight of greasy wool is reduced by the processes to 2.041 b, the extent of the reduction depending on the fineness and quality of the wool. The. machinery in a woollen mill is very costly. Much of it requires skilled labour, and labour costs in the woollen industry in New Zealand are still high compared with those in the industry at Horne. New Zealand millers-work under a further difficulty: they have to •bnv their full stocks of wool for the year during the few months that the wool sales are on. and consequently they have to carry large stocks of wool and oi spun yarns. English millers are able

(o purchase their requirements weekly or fortnightly the whole year round.

THE TWO MIDDLEMEN

To produce the ounce package of knitting wool the manufacturing process does not go so far as in the making of worsted doth. But the knitting wool has to be made up into small packages, neatly parcelled and labelled, and sold in small quantities over the shop counter. .So the costs mount up, it is explained. There are two middlemen between the farmer and the woman who buys her wool ready for knitting. The first is the manufacturer. Manufacturing is largely a matter of earning wages and interest o.i capital employed, and he claims that his profit is at a minimum. The other middleman is the retailer; and in these times of keen competition it is hardily possible for him to get an unreasonable profit. The farmer’s selling price is certainly very different from the price at which the woman buys; but much labour, lime, and capital (in the form of intricate machinery) are involved after the wool leaves his hands and before it reaches hers.