Wool growers advised work in unison with textiles industry
10 Feb '06
3 min read
South African wool industry was contributing funds to the generic promotion of wool, he added.
“The way to succeed is to create innovative products, exploit competitive advantages in the global market, forming national and international partnerships and efficient networking,” De Lange said.
Past decade has witnessed labour situation at its worst, and to stem the rot, shared initiatives between wool growers and its stakeholders could also impact the labour intensive textiles and clothing industries.
National Economic Development and Labour Council (Nedlac) in its report has forecast that “if the employment trends continue the sector will disappear by 2012,” which means that the clothing and textile industries would experience loss between 50000-75000 jobs in the formal and informal sectors over the next nine years.
The Nedlac report blamed the shortage of local fabric production and variety among them, as major factors for the decline of the industry in general.
According to the outgoing NWGA chairman Petrus de Wet, ebbing demand for wool could be attributed to the cessation of generic wool marketing in 1999.
“There is a new drive worldwide to pick up promotion of apparel wool, initiated by the International Wool Textile Organisation,” De Wet said.
He also informed that Wool Trust has allotted R500 000 for this and farmers could pay a voluntary levy of 2c/kg towards the generic marketing of wool.
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