FLAX PACK NOT SUITABLE

Southland Times, Issue 23027, 22 October 1936, Page 4

FLAX PACK NOT SUITABLE

Wool For England RESULT OF BRADFORD EXPERIMENTS (United Press Association.) Wellington, October 21. “I have to-day received by air mail the results of meticulous experiments made at- Bradford Technical College, and from these reports it is definitely stated that the packing of wool in flax pack is going to be very detrimental to the New Zealand farmer and wool users generally,” said Mr S. W. Broadhead, past president of the British Wool Federation, in an interview. “The chairman of the wool pack committee of the Bradford Wool Federation states in a letter to me to-day that in their opinion no improvement in the manufacture of the flax pack will eliminate the faults of the pack as they are quite satisfied that the raw material used is entirely unsuitable for packing wool into,” he said. “This must be of very vital interest to the wool grower as I am firmly of the opinion that wool so packed when selling will suffer depreciation in value against wool packed in a jute pack. I regret very sincerely to have to make such a damaging statement, but feel that in the interests of the wool grower and the wool user it is necessary to do so.” Mr Broadhead said that when New Zealand first sent the new flax pack to Europe, wool users unreservedly condemned it. A sample of a further flax pack showed some improvement, but when the wool arrived at Bradford it proved little, if any, better. Last season’s pack also showed a slight improvement, but was still behind the jute pack in efficiency. “I wish most emphatically to stress the point that we in Bradford are not wishing to be obstructionists in any way in your desire to use your own raw material and labour in producing a wool pack, but the many faults which we pointed out are extremely vital to your woo l growers,” he added.