Wool tenderness No. 1 issue this season
The drought brought double trouble for Devold growers; extra feed costs plus fleece tenderness due to issues with feed transitions. Words Joanna Grigg, photos Bella Black & Craig Smith.
Reflecting on the growing and selling season, everyone knew it was going to be tough to avoid tender wool given the drought conditions rolling out across the South Island. Unfortunately, the result has hit some farmers’ pockets hard, with tender wool being excluded from the more lucratively priced contracts for the best fleece wool,” says Craig Smith, aka “Smithy”, general manager, New Zealand for Devold.
To meet the Devold contract, wool strength must be at least 38 NKT (Newtons per kilotex). Around 20% of signed-up wool has not met this strength parameter this year, explains Craig.
“The phone calls have been tough at times. There can be thousands of dollars riding on it. But Devold won’t compromise on quality as the best consumer experience is only found when using quality ingredients and this starts with the quality greasy wool we buy.”
Craig says it is very disappointing to hear and see other contracts with lower NKT specifications.
He suggests that more diligence at classing time may have helped the wool clip make the grade and urges that classers need to check three or four areas right across the fleece for tenderness, not just one spot.
“Some areas of the fleece were fine but other areas were tender, and it only takes a sample of the tender wool to downgrade the whole bale.”
This lack of uniformity is puzzling and he says he and growers are scratching their heads about why, and what could have been done to avoid it.
The break has occurred at the base of the staple, suggesting an autumn feed change, he says. The transition from poor-quality, hill feed to higher-protein, autumn crops may have been the moment.
There are definitive answers on the effects of sudden feeding changes, he says.
“What’s less clear is why there is variation over the fleece.”
From a supply perspective, Craig says Devold is extremely happy with the wool that did meet the contract.
“We won’t be topping up from auction and accept that one year is okay to be a bit short of supply and we hope for a better season next year.”
Strength and length are critical to how wool will perform during carding, gilling and combing. Wool that is tested as being tender can still make relatively good prices at auction.
Devold growers’ tour wool store
Growers got to see wool samples being collected firsthand, at the tour of the PGG Wrightson Wool Store in Christchurch, in June.
As part of the Devold Growers Summit, growers were taken through the wool handling process.
This included from truck drop-off to viewing grab-sampling of the bales, to presentation of the samples in viewing boxes for auction.
Growers saw the grab-sampler machine in action. This has mechanical jaws that extract wool from various positions and depths within each bale. The number of grabs per bale depends on the number of bales within a lot. More grabs are taken per bale from smaller lots, to ensure a representative sample. A second MTS machine took random tuft samples from the grab samples as they passed through the machine. A minimum of 63 tufts per grab sample are taken. These were rolled up into a gauze, ready to be transported to the laboratory.
The final piece in the chain is for a single staple from each tuft to be removed and measured using an ATLAS machine. Each end of the staple is clamped by jaws and pulled until the staple ruptures. The force needed to break it is measured in newtons. The weight of each piece of broken staple is used to determine where the break is. Craig Smith, Devold, says fewer than 25% of Devold growers had
been through the Christchurch store so it was a great opportunity to take people through.
The Summit was attended by 105 growers. They heard from the Devold chief executive officer (via video link) and Tor Jonsson, the factory manager in Lithuania, attended in person. Craig says Devold has been weathering challenging economic times quite well. Sales are 20% above budget and pre-orders are tracking well.
“We just need a good cold winter in Europe to push sales.”
The Devold Global retail sales team have been learning about NZ wool and for some, this included showing them wool in its greasy form.
“Some had never seen wool in its raw form or had really understood about the way quality can vary from sheep to sheep.”
The Devold sheep to shop principal means the company works to control and manage the whole pipeline. The company aims to double sales across the world by 2028, but only if we get the right wool to do it, Craig says.
George and Sarah Murray, Aschworth Station, Marlborough, attended the Growers Summit and said it was their first Devold event and visit to the wool store.
“It was really nice to be involved and understand the full journey of where the wool goes. We got to understand that length is really important to a quality garment and tenderness and monitoring is really important during classing,” Sarah says.
The Murrays say that all the statistics from the farms, including average wool staple length and strength, were shared.
Sarah classes the Aschworth clip and this year she says she “pulled the fleece often more than once” to check tenderness.
“We shore late so we were very aware of tenderness issues emerging this season, so we really worked to keep all tender fleeces out of the main line.” All of the Aschworth main line made ‘contract’.
“Tender wool can still sell okay but it’s not worth the risk of contaminating your main line and missing contracts.”
These drought events are just the nature of farming, Sarah says.