Carpet wool payback three years away

Wool Partners International expects its new plan to market carpet wool will bring farmers an increase in income in about three years but they will have to dip into their pockets first reports the Dom Post. The company, half-owned by PGG Wrightson and a farmer co-operative that is yet to sign up shareholders, gave reporters a preview of the sales pitch it will take to wool growers in meetings around NZ. The plan centres on increasing retail promotion, but this may have to be funded by farmers, a concept strongly rejected by them when the Wool Board was broken up seven years ago. Chief executive Iain Abercrombie said the growers would be urged to commit their wool to the company because it offered an integrated grower-to-retailer supply chain with a strong brand, the Fernmark. He said the company would be the first in the world to allow growers to have an equity stake in the business and a say in how it was managed. However, rival company Elders Primary Wool disputes that. It is also half-owned by a grower co-operative and has already announced a deal with the world's biggest carpet retailer, CCA Global Partners, to develop a new brand aimed at the luxury market. An indication of how Wool Partners would field questions about Elders came when Mr Abercrombie said Elders did not believe that growers should be involved in or have control of the wool business and he dismissed its CCA deal as a "one-off". That view was later rejected by Elders managing director Stuart Chapman, who said its model was identical to Wool Partners', "only functional". Elders Primary has 900 grower shareholders. He said another deal had recently been signed up with Romney breeders to sell rugs made from their wool in the United States. Both Elders and Wool Partners have yet to put detailed plans to farmers but so far each says it is receiving increasing supplies of farmers' wool.