Honouree aims to save wool industry
Garth Carnaby has unfinished business.
Forty years after the Canterbury scientist first entered the New Zealand wool industry, he has returned, hoping to find new uses for an unloved commodity.
He stepped back from wool in the early 2000s, when things got really bad, and into the world of science and business administration, forging a second career that has seen him appointed a Companion of the New Zealand Order of Merit for his service to science and governance in the New Year Honours.
He was president of the Royal Society of New Zealand from 2009 to 2012 and chair of the Marsden Fund – New Zealand’s premier provider of research grants – from 2004 to 2009.
‘‘You get to see amazing intellectual ambition from all the brightest people in the country [with Marsden],’’ he said. ‘‘The humanities was always interesting because you could understand the topic. Some of the [others] were almost impossible to fathom.’’
Carnaby maintained a curiously low public profile in his career in governance.
The Lincoln man chaired the Canterbury Development Corporation (CDC) from 2007 to 2016, but stayed out of the spotlight even when it was thrust to the fore after the region’s earthquakes.
The CDC and the Canterbury Employers’ Chamber of Commerce set up Recover Canterbury, which raised and distributed money to affected businesses. By the end of its life, the organisation had helped dispense more than $6 million to 7000 businesses.
‘‘There were a whole raft of volunteers set up in a warehouse in Addington that managed a bank of phones and went out to see people,’’ Carnaby said. ‘‘There wasn’t much bureaucracy around it, it was just ‘Get on with it’.’’
Carnaby is now based at Lincoln University – its ‘‘entrepreneur in residence’’ – as he ventures back into wool to find new industrial uses for a product that was once the backbone of New Zealand’s agricultural economy.
‘‘There’s a bit of unfinished business there that I think still needs looking at,’’ he said. ‘‘I haven’t given up on it entirely.
‘‘The market’s soft and needs some new outlets where consumers will pay good money for it. If we can do something original with it, it’s a big prize.’’