Marketing may be the savior for Australia’s shrinking wool industry but without true innovation its future is questionable.
Former head of CSIRO Textile and Fibre division, Nigel Johnson has warned the wool industry has a limited future if it relies on marketing without relevant research.
- Researc h needed to keep wool competitive
- New competition coming from biomass renewables
- 2009 is the UN Year of the Natural Fibre
After 35 years of wool research he now works in the business unit of the national research organisation, after the textile and fibre division was folded into the larger Materials Science and Engineering division earlier this year.
"I may have a biased view but it is not sustainable to rely on marketing alone," Dr Johnson said.
"Yes, wool's natural, sustainable and renewable nature is a great selling point but there are other natural, renewable fibres now appearing through renewable biomass technology creating fibres from crops and bacteria."
Dr Johnson said fossil-based 'synthetic' fibres of the last 50 years would be superceded by these new "biomass renewables" over the next 50 years.
But he said it was the research innovations of the past that had kept wool competitive, despite being three to five times more expensive than synthetic commodity fibres and cotton.
He recalls how he joined the wool industry in the 1970s when fears the world was running out of oil excited opportunities for wool - a similar sentiment exists today.
2009 is the United Nations International Year of the Natural Fibre and a great opportunity for the Australian wool industry to capitalise on opportunities, according to Dr Johnson who said the issues the industry now faced now were similar to those 30 years ago.
"Making wool a positive experience is still the biggest and most promising areas for post farm research," Dr Johnson said.
"Next to skin comfort has come a long way but shape retention, machine washability and reducing chemical reliance in processing are still the big issues."
Dr Johnson said only $5 million would be spent on wool research this year at CSIRO from industry and taxpayer funding, down from $30 million in 1992-93, work that would struggle to keep up with increasing consumer expectations that apparel fibres had to be environmentally friendly and perform well.
As the new board of Australian Wool Innovation continues to slash projects, Dr Johnson urged the powers that be to keep an integrated research and marketing strategy involving both short and long term research projects; close alliances between funders and researchers; better international collaboration with research; and to throw away the contestability model of research finding which he said had been so wasteful.
Meanwhile, this week the Sheep CRC announced it had made a "flying start" to a number of its wool research projects.
Deputy chief executive Graham Truscott said next to skin comfort, handle and softness as well as natural whiteness and photostability for seasonal knitwear were the critical areas of research.
"We are working on the innovative 'prickle-meter', which will enable manufacturers to objectively assess the relative comfort of fabrics and garments and this is now entering the commercialisation phase."
Mr Truscott also said genetic information from the Information Nucleus was helping to fast-track Australian Sheep Breeding Values to help ram selection to assist in improving many important processing traits, with the expectation these values would be in use for the 2009 breeding season.
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