Wool sector finds unified voice

It has been disappointing watching a once strong and vibrant wool sector diminish to nearly a by-product status.

Everybody comments on the quality of the product, but buyers pay little for that priveledge of ownership.

As often happens, change only happens when survival instincts click in, and maybe farmers abandoning levy payments provided the catalyst for reform.

While it has seemed to take forever, Taskforce chairman Dr Murray Horn said it only took 10 days to put together a unfied group to represent wool interests and drag wool out of the mire.

 Let us hope a unified approach will revive the fortunes of a beleagured industry.

After years of acrimonious dispute amid plummeting returns, the wool industry has decided to join up to forge a new strategy reports Stuff. Agriculture Minister David Carter hailed the newly formed Wool Group as a "respected voice". The Government would now work with it to find ways to improve the profitability of the industry, he said yesterday.

The group, which may choose a new name at a later meeting, met for the first time yesterday and decided to look outside the industry for an independent chairman. It has 17 members, representing 17 different organisations involved in wool's transformation from fleece to carpet. Further members may be added, including the sheep industry body Beef + Lamb New Zealand, which till farmers rejected a wool levy, was known as Meat & Wool, and a representative of the marketing-consumer end of the business.

Taskforce chair Dr Murray Horn said "When I started interviewing people it was clear they all realised this was an industry that could do a hell of a lot better, that an opportunity was here to be had and they all wanted to be part of the future," he said. Members had signed up to an agreement that set out their objectives and how to resolve differences.

This asks members to "raise and earnestly endeavour to resolve differences among themselves before pursuing those differences outside the group".