Wool industry face global clash says Michael Lempriere
02 Mar '06
3 min read
Michael Lempriere - President, International Wool Textile Organisation stated that wool was going through yet another of its difficult periods.
The reserve price had been “set in concrete” at an unsustainable level, the Soviet bloc had collapsed, the world economic outlook was uncertain, and the Australian Wool Corporation, was buying over half of the daily offerings, was heavily in debt, and there was no apparent way out of this impasse, except perhaps to shut the eyes and hope that the problem would go away.
At that time I got myself in considerable trouble with almost everybody for stating the obvious. That maybe what had worked in the past was not going to necessarily work in the future, that in a changing world past decisions should always be under review and that we should have a good hard look at the Reserve Price Scheme.
Six months later the Reserve was reduced by a half hearted 20 percent, and by the end of the year it was dead. The funeral has been long, messy and very expensive. Australian (and global) wool production has halved, costs have increased well over 50 percent yet prices, particularly for fine wool are, in real terms, at historic lows.
In spite of innumerable enquiries and reshuffling of the deck chairs, the structure of the industry and the various organisations that purport to represent and support it remain by and large the same, and the debate within the industry still sounds - particularly to those who have heard it all before – remarkably familiar.
marketing@alchempro.com
