Wellington
New Zealand’s forgotten fibre’s doing its best to get itself off the mat.
Coarse wool’s course over the past five decades has been almost unremittingly down – both inprice and perception.
There’s been numerous, mostly ill-fated, attempts to reverse this trend.
A couple of innovative moves last year by the industry might be showing some green shoots ofpromise however.
1.
Wool Research Organisation
of NZ Inc/Fahrenheit 212- new uses venture
2.
WoolIndustry Research Consortium
– new projects (see separate story)
Wool Research contracted New York-based, New Zealander headed
F212 matched coarse wool research products with potential market applications, and came up withthe following four areas, (there’s still a bit of confidentiality around this, so apologies forvagueness).
1.Beauty care applications
2.Active apparel applications
3.Bedding
4.Infantcare
F212 usually works with large corporates assisting them to identify and develop new products orvalue propositions. In this wool case a large part of F212’s success fee is seeing new businessesget off the ground and producing products. One of its main recommendations was not to attempt totake a final product through to market, but to produce a new ingredient to on-sell in abusiness-to-business proposition to marketers. (Goretex, used by many different clothingmanufacturers and supporting a US$6 billion market was given as an example).
Well, four months after F212’s Christchurch and Auckland show and tells, commercialpropositions for three of the four are being put together.
Four separate groups expressed interest in the beauty care concept.
“We’re encouraging a value chain approach, linking supply, manufacture and marketing,” saysWool Research’s general manager Ian Cuthbertson.
Somewhat ironically, and as an aside, as NZ sheep numbers fall, the guarantee of wool supply issomething that will have to be carefully monitored.
Cuthbertson says the business cases for all four areas are still being worked on. Wool Researchwill financially assist the R&D required by the interested parties looking at the opportunities.
Each of the areas requires further investment in R&D as well as commercial analysis toscientifically back up the consumer benefits claimed within the products, and to support developmentof the market opportunity.
Companies assessing the opportunities are keen to identify appropriate international marketlinkages before they commit to investment in the concept says Cuthbertson.
The baby product needs more work on its business case in order for NZ industry to consider it acompelling proposition, but it is agreed that this is an area that wool should be excelling in. Ifnecessary, Wool Research will invest further through the wool consortium to flesh out the infantcare opportunity, but prefers to do so with the support and direction of a potential commercialisingcompany.
However the concept that has most opened New Zealanders’ eyes has been that of ‘ingredientmarketing’.
Making an added value product with attributes and functionality at the right price, and takingthis to brand owners isn’t rocket science.
But it hasn’t been done by the NZ wool industry in significant scale – apart from carpet yarnspinners.
Normally we have attempted to export consumer ready goods – a hard thing to succeed in from NewZealand without excellent international distribution networks.
Generating a consumer brand costs heaps; partnering with European and American companies to carryout this end of the operation means value can ideally be produced at the ingredient level in NewZealand says Cuthbertson.
Footnote: sticK has a stronger than average interest in wool, coming off a Southlandsheep farm, and having ‘gained experienced (i.e. failed) in a wool product venture, 'Funkball'himself (see here for an old website). But, as a productthat we do well, there’s potential yet in the fibre and in matching its attributes to differentapplications. If some of these potential wool ‘ingredients’ take off, sheep farmers and thecountry will have a significant ‘new’ valuable product.