New international sales initiatives and recognition by US standards authorities could make a brighter future for struggling wool growers. But as some farmers breed away from wool with prices that barely cover their costs, will help arrive in time reports The NZ Herald? Wool exports for the year ending April were down 17% to 115,665 tonnes, with the value down 8.5 % to $568.8 million. Sheep numbers fell 11% to 34 million in the year to June 2008, while the Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry last year said inflation adjusted prices were only 6.2% of the peak of the Korean War wool boom. Elders Primary Wool, unveiled its new brand, Just Shorn, at last week's Fieldays, with plans to market natural, sustainable luxury carpets and rugs in the US. Elders Rural Holdings managing director Stuart Chapman says research shows there is demand for an environmentally responsible product like NZ wool carpet."That's a market that's perhaps commencing at the more affluent end and it's people that are changing their lifestyle and actually demanding those sort of products rather than it just being a fad," Chapman says. "All we need to do now is just finalise the specs for the particular carpet collection that CCA is going to retail on ... over the next two to three weeks and we should be buying wool by the end of July." Elders in January announced a deal to directly supply US carpet retailer CCA Global Partners and five key carpet manufacturers. The new range will be officially launched at a textile convention in Las Vegas in January next year. "There's enough elasticity in the pricing of the complete value chain where we can lift the value at the retail end because we're going to sell the NZ story, sell the sustainable, natural, beautiful, environmentally friendly part of the woollen carpet," he says. "We will sell that at a premium and we know people will be happy to pay that slight premium but the difference that makes back at the grower end is significant." Growing the US market share of woollen carpets to only 3% would use up NZ's entire strong wool clip, Chapman says.
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