Wool Industry's Enormous Growth

Rodney and Otamatea Times, Waitemata and Kaipara Gazette, 3 January 1940, Page 5

Wool Industry's Enormous Growth

A pictorial graph in the New Zealand Wool Council's pavilion in the General Exhibits Court at the Centennial Exhibition brings out the importance of the wool industry to the Dominion and also the astonishing facts of flock increase after the first settlement. In 1840 their were no flocks above the dozens and the scores, but in 1844 their were in the young colony 1000 sheep, which clipped 110 bales for home weaving and export; by 1871 the flocks had increased phenomenally to 9.7 millions and the clipped to J06.700 bale; by 1900 the flocksr had more than doubled, to 19.1 millions, while the clip, as a result of attention to breeding, hid increased more than threefold, to 376,000 bales; the •] 938-38 flocks rose to the peak of 32.4 millions and the clip to 917,000 bales, sheep and wool : products representing. 48 per cent, of all New Zealand products. Australia, with 113.9 million sheep, is the greatest of the wool-producing Dominions, the 1937-38 clip totalling 1015 million pounds; South Africa has more sheep than New Zealand! (43 V 1 millions) but produces less wool, about 250 million pounds, compared with New Zealand's 3^7 million pouuds. New Zealand, however, leads in lamb and mutton production over both the other great sheep and wool Dominions. Of the Dominion clip in normal years about 50 per cent; goes to the United Kingdom, France.iTnipivn, the United States and Qenpafa^haying been our other main customers overseas.