WORLD WOOL OUTLOOK

Taranaki Daily News, 2 December 1933, Page 3 (Supplement)

WORLD WOOL OUTLOOK

AN UNSATISFIED DEMAND GERMAN SPINNER’S VIEWS. SCOPE FOR DEVELOPMENT. Auckland, Nov. 27. “If I were a New Zealand farmer I should double my sheep,” said Mr. Alfred Kummerle, of the Kummerle spinning mills, Brandenburg, Germany, who is visiting Auckland. “There is no doubt that business is improving and that more wool is wanted to Europe and nearly all over the world.” Mr. Kummerle has spent the past five weeks in touring the sheep farming districts of both the North and South Island by motor-car, and has come to Auckland to see something of the season’s first wool sale before leaving for Sydney on Thursday. He intends to tour Australia to study wool production there as in New Zealand, and will visit the East before returning to Germany. “You can be sure of continued high prices,” he continued. “At the same time, I do not like very sudden rises; there is always the risk of a relapse. On the whole, I think that prices will settle down somewhere about pre-war level; but not above it.” Germany was likely to require fully as much wool this season as last, Mr. Kummerle said, but if prices went too high she would have to buy • less, for the reason that expenditure on imports was restricted in order to sustain the mark, which had only a 20 per cent, gold backing. Wool, as a raw material, was naturally in a favoured position, but the restriction might have some effect on purchases. THE WOOLLEN BROWN SHIRT. In his own business, which was in knitting-yarns, trade was good because in hard times women were inclined to buy fewer made-up garments and to knit more themselves. His firm was a fairly large consumer of New Zealand wools, particularly -from the South Island. “I do not believe that the political changes in Germany are having any effect on trade,” he said, in reply to a question, “except that the thousands of Nazi uniforms call for a great deal of extra wool. Hitherto the brown shirt has been mostly of cotton, but I believe that woollen materials will be used more and more. Even the cotton shirt, with no coat over it, calls for heavier underwear in cold weather.” Generally speaking, economic depression tended to give wool an advantage over its new rival, artificial silk, woollen goods being on the whole cheaper for the amount of warmth they provided. It seemed likely that the depression of American currency would .lead to a greater demand for wool in that country, since there was a greater inducement to the consumer to put his money into goods. In the past, for some reason, depression had tended to benefit the American textile trade. However, it was difficult to forecast the effects of President Roosevelt’s monetary policies. A MAINSTAY FOR NEW ZEALAND. The outlook for increased wool consumption in the East was promising and on the whole there seemed little likelihood of world over-production for a considerable time to come. Speaking of New Zealand wool-grow-ing, Mr. Kummerle said there seemed to be a good deal of scops for pasture development, but he realised that the treatment of large areas by top-dressing would be very expensive, especially to landholders who carried heavy mortgages and were just emerging from a period of very low prices. He was struck by the vei-y large areas of land still under fern in the North Island. After seeing Taranaki he was driven to wonder whether that province would not see a considerable turnover from dairying to intensive sheep-raising before very many years. Speaking as an outsider, he would hazard the opinion that New Zealand might find wool her mainstay if the word-wide over-production of dairy produce became more acute.

Personally, Mr. Kummerle had no complaint to make of the quality of New Zealand wool, but he commended . the growers’ scheme for levying upon themselves for systematic research into problems affecting the industry.