THE OTAGO DAILY TIMES SATURDAY, June 4, 1938. COMPETITORS WITH WOOL

Otago Daily Times, Issue 23517, 4 June 1938, Page 14

THE OTAGO DAILY TIMES SATURDAY, June 4, 1938. COMPETITORS WITH WOOL

It was a pertinent reference which the Minister of Lands, when opening the Winter Show yesterday, made to the growing competition of artificial fabrics with those manufactured from the pure woollen fibre. The Dominion’s production of wool last year, as Mr Langstone showed, was approximately 303,000,000 pounds weight, representing a very important fraction of the total of our export trade. It is, as farmers and others have now been compelled to realise, no unimportant challenge that synthetic fibres are making to the livelihood of those engaged in wool-growing, in this country as elsewhere. Mr Langstone laid stress on the significant fact that while the output of wool has varied within narrow limits in recent years, the growth in the volume of production of substitutes for the staple has, during the same period, been really staggering. The figures, in this connection, can be left to speak for themselves. There is evidence in our news columns to-day of the impressive qualities of cloths now being made in Germany from woodpulp. It is not so well known that in England there are at least four plants operating at the present time in the production of what is known as wood-base staple fibre for sale to the trade at a small cost Last

year the output of these mills was 34.000. pounds. They are not in any way experimental. They do not receive Government subsidies, as is the case in those countries where economic nationalism is being desperately pursued as a policy. They function as part of the normal industry of the country, and they have no difficulty in finding a market for what they can turn out, at a price that may be about half that charged for scoured merino, this being the type of wool with which the woodpulp substitute competes. Nevertheless interest in the development of wool substitutes in England is luke-warm compared with that in Germany, Italy and Japan. In those countries the search for synthetic products is being pushed to amazing lengths. In 1935 the German output of wood-pulp fibre was 33.000. pounds weight. In 1936 that output was expanded to 100.000. pounds, and in 1937 to 200.000. pounds, and it is expected that this year’s total will be 325.000. pounds substantially greater than the total New Zealand clip as quoted by the Minister. The Italians last year produced approximately 150,000,000 pounds, some of it wood fibre and some of it lanilal, the casein product to which Mr Langstone made passing reference. For the first nine months of 1936 Japanese mills produced only 26.000. pounds of the synthetic fibre. For the corresponding period of 1937 the output was 118,000,000 pounds, and the expectation is that by the end of this year, if war measures do not prevent industrial expansion, there will be Japanese factories capable of turning out more than 2,000,000 pounds a day! In Japan also the Italian technique is being adapted to Manchukuoan bean-cake —a residue left after the extraction of the oil from soya beans. It is claimed that results comparable with those obtained from casein are possible from the bean-cake. If this claim can be justified Japan will receive material compensation for a natural shortage of forest resources from which to derive the wood-pulp fibre. So far the merits of these synthetic fibres have not been adequately tested. It has been boldly said that the cloths which are produced from them have properties akin to those of the genuine woollen article, but the expert investigators—prominent among them being the members of the International Wool Research Secretariat —qre by no means satisfied that these assertions can be sustained. Indeed, it was cheering to read this week that Italy and Germany are again operating on the wool market, encouraged by the comparatively low values ruling, and that the belief in Bradford is that both Italian and German reliance on synthetic fibres has been the result of necessity rather than of choice. It may be, as has been again suggested in expert circles in England, that modestly-priced wool has nothing to fear from the competition of substitutes. But there can be no gainsaying the fact that the substitutes have gained a vast amount of ground in the past five years, and that their hold on the cheaper markets of the world will not lightly be relinquished. If wool is to retain its own pride of place, if, indeed, it is to make up any of the ground already lost, there must be unremitting effort to keep the using public aware of its superior virtues as a base for clothing of all kinds. In such a task New Zealand cannot afford to be other than actively interested, and Mr Langstone will perform a valuable service if he continues to impress that truth on the public mind.