Spinning a new yarn on crossbred wool

Lacking the ‘‘sex appeal’’ of merino, crossbred wool has languished in the sales doldrums for decades. Enter two men, passionate about their product, who are putting crossbred wool back where they say it belongs, on the backs, in the homes, and in the hea

The wool board’s performance sparked two years of debate on referendums and reforms, and in 2001, was dissolved and restructured.

For most of his farming career, Cameron had been critical of ‘‘outcry’’ selling, the model involving shouting and the use of hand signals on the trading floor that focused on volume rather than quality. He and Algie felt quality had been neglected and wool as a brand had taken a serious hit.

He believed a third of the wool was sold prior to auction and this consolidation of bidders reduced competition.

It made him a fan of the Dutch flower auction style, where the price starts high and drops until the product is sold.

During the 1990s, he formed a group, Strong Wool South, to come up with a new farm-to-market model.

This was at a time when the wool board’s trading platform, Woolnet, came online two years before Trade Me was invented (in 1999). It presented the opportunity for farmers to trade business to business, rather than using all the intermediaries that comprised the wool industry.

In a clandestine activity, Cameron and his group approached a Reid Farmers-run wool scour, which would give them the ability to blend wool on scale and distribute.

‘‘It had a ‘tight five’ of farmers alongside experienced Wool Pro people with a common goal in mind.’’

However, the proposal was ‘‘disallowed’’. The scour was to be dismantled.

‘‘As the leader, I decided to cut our losses and use the experiences as wisdom for the future.

‘‘The industry naturally did not want the complications or interruptions, and we did not have the hearts and minds of the owners, just their managers.’’

But he was not prepared to give up just yet.

‘‘I spent a lot of time in the trenches. This was war and you had to play it like a war game.’’

It was a matter of picking his moment to see who would ‘‘go over the top’’ with him.

Along came Algie, a textile designer and manufacturer with a good sales pitch, who had started out his wool career at the former Alliance Textiles mill in Milton, in South Otago.

His dad was a yarn twister, and he grew up with an appreciation of what went into making good worsted yarn: ‘‘Crap in, crap out’’ became his motto.

He had taken a hit in the global financial crisis by trying to save 40-year-old Dunedin-founded company, Tamahine Knitwear, from going under, only to sink himself $4m in debt.

‘‘I had to pick myself up or curl up and die.’’

Algie had enough confidence to get back in the game and told farmers: ‘‘Give us $500 and I will get something going.’’

That something and someone was Rick Cameron and Agmatch, and out of it, Agwoolnz, for the worsted yarn products it is producing today.

Wool manufacturing

In the 1970s, the wool manufacturing sector went through a similar scenario as the wool industry.

This was in the days before the mills had tariff protections, the taxes that increased the cost of foreign imports, ‘‘and abused them as most protected industries do’’, Algie said.

It had a good side though. ‘‘When the product was made in New Zealand, New Zealand wool was used most of the time in products here in our home market. Today, most of the wool items sold here do not use New Zealand wool as they are made offshore with the best price being required to meet the market. So the best priced yarns are usually chosen and they do not come from New Zealand. What Agwoolnz does deals with this issue.’’

People were effectively buying the product from the farmer who grew the wool.

The problem with the way wool was marketed today was the length of the chain, and the number of hands it went through, with everyone taking a margin, he said.

‘‘Thirty years ago, this chain was shorter and much more direct. Alliance in Milton for example, bought the wool scoured, converted it to yarn, made blankets, rugs and hand-knitting yarn and sold on to retail. Earlier still, the original Bruce woollen mills had their own retail outlets and sold direct to the public so the chain was farmer, mill and end user. For Alliance in the 1970s, it was farmer, manufacturer, retail for half of the output and a garment manufacturer was added to the woven fabrics produced, so there were three to four in the chain before the end user.’’

Today there could be as many as five or six hands in the chain – sometimes more, therefore wool had a heavy cost burden to keep it afloat, he said.

Not a cure-all

Agwoolnz allowed farmers to take some control over the chain by reducing the number of hands, ‘‘to return quality and value to locally grown wool products’’.

In more than 40 years in the industry, he had seen that quality could not be faked, Algie said.

Bad yarn breaks; if a garment pills – when groups of short or broken fibres on the surface of the fabric become tangled together in a tiny knot or ball – it is because of the quality of the wool and the way it has been spun.

‘‘A lot of the time, the blend was rubbish, therefore we were undermining our own manufacturing.

‘‘You have got to get the blend right and that starts at the farm.’’

The jerseys were made with something approaching the ‘‘RollsRoyce’’ of spun yarn, which came close to resembling the look and feel of merino. Algie had been impressed by the commitment shown by farmers, who were taking a lot of pride and ownership in the venture, with

800 jerseys already sold in the second pilot. But it was not a cure-all for the dire state of crossbred wool prices.

They had started small but there was potential to grow another 100 members.

They are sending small quantities of their product around the world and keeping the lines small; just the jersey along with beanies, socks and work shirts, and soon the carpet.

However, the whole thing, while hard work, had been a buzz.

‘‘After many years in manufacturing and marketing the end product, it is hugely satisfying to do something that is fair to everyone involved; that actually does something valuable and to produce real quality and well targeted products that are not hampered by poor quality blends. It makes it worth the farmers growing and presenting exactly what the market needs, because it is profitable and satisfying to do so.’’