Beyond the Bale - Issue 25 - First-hand look at China
AWI gives six industry representatives a ringside seat in China as the country's keen interest in Australian Merino intensifies
South Australian woolgrower and WoolProducers councillor Geoff Power (pictured right) is urging fellow woolgrowers to "hang in there" after seeing for himself the potential for Australian Merino in China. "I know it's hard to be told to stick with wool for another 12 to 18 months, but the work AWI is doing in China is impressive," Mr Power says.
"It is on the right track and China is where the new middle-class consumers of quality products will be. The benefits to the Australian woolgrower will flow once everything in the pipeline takes off."
Mr Power, who runs a medium wool enterprise at Orroroo in South Australia, was one of six wool industry representatives selected to join an AWI tour. They were given first-hand experience of the direct business relationships AWI has with Chinese businesses, to raise the level of understanding among growers of the AWI strategy in this key market.
Meetings with representatives of leading wool industry businesses in Beijing, Ningbo and Shanghai highlighted to the group the high regard these businesses have for Australian Merino wool.
The five-day tour coincided with SpinExpo – a biannual event at which an estimated 150 spinners from more than 15 countries display their fibres, yarns, knitwear and knitting fabrics. It was the second time AWI had attended SpinExpo, with many existing and potential customers visiting the company's site during the three-day event.
"SpinExpo was unbelievable and the AWI display was striking and one of the most popular sites," Mr Power says. "Australian Merino was promoted as a high-tech fabric for a high-tech world and that message came across well."
The tour group met with Reward, the largest topmaker in China, which buys more than 180,000 bales of Australian wool a year. AWI has a close working relationship with Reward as early-stage processing partners, where the project focus is ‘Softwool'. This is created by a treatment known as ‘Basolan', which increases softness, resulting in a final product that ‘feels' about two microns less than actual measurement. Reward supplies wool tops to another business the group met: the Youngor Group, one of China's largest manufacturers of men's suits. Youngor produces about two million suits a year, with wool comprising 75 per cent of all fibre used by the company.
AWI's focus with Youngor is its ‘Business Travel Suit' project to produce a crush-resistant, crease-resistant and stain-repellent suit. This innovation is targeted at the Chinese middle class, which is growing by 22 million people each year.
The group was also given a tour of Heilan, another of AWI's business partners and one of China's biggest wool textile mills, which manufactures 3.5 million suits a year. Heilan entered into a commercial partnership with AWI in early 2005 to produce machine-washable, wool-blend suits for retail in China. The first batch of 4000 suits has sold out and the second round of production will be delivered to Chinese stores in coming months.
The group also met with the China Wool Textile Association (CWTA), China's peak organisation in the wool textile industry. This gave the visiting Australians an understanding of the complexities and scale of the Chinese wool industry.
Also on the tour were Neil Jackson, president of the Stud Merino Breeders Association of Western Australia; Tom Ashby, vice-president of the Australian Association of Stud Merino Breeders; Greg Weller, executive director of WoolProducers; Simon Murnane, general manager of the Meat, Wool and Dairy department of the Food and Agriculture Division, Department of Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry (DAFF); and Sarah Ackland, Tasmanian woolgrower and Nuffield Scholar.
Return to Beyond the Bale issue 25 index page.