Still crazy about wool after all these years on Home Services

Jan

Still crazy about wool after all these years

posted by admin in Window Cleaning

Campbell Bary’s passion for wool knows no bounds. It causes normal social courtesies and politeness to go out the window. “When I meet a sheep farmer who’s wearing polyester or polarfleece or any of that synthetic crap then I tell them straight, it’s no use moaning to me about the price of wool,” he says. There’s a ferocity in his voice that hasn’t faded in more than 30 years in the wool trade. Bary has a valid claim to his righteousness. He is a sheep and beef farmer who, with wife Allie, also runs his own knitting mill. For more than 20 years he travelled the world seeking markets for their jerseys made in a small back-street building in Marton. But in recent years they have had to bow to the inevitable encroachment from cheap China-made garments. It has forced a retreat to their home market and a specialisation in heavyweight jerseys. It has also given the Barys more time on the farm 987 hectares of rolling hill country near Dannevirke and their home-based 35ha lamb-fattening unit near Marton. At 66 and with the winding back of the business, you would think Bary’s thoughts would be turning more to a well-earned retirement, but no. His enthusiasm for wool is undimmed and he has several irons in the fire, stoking up new wool products and markets that he cannot yet talk about. The trouble with wool, he says, is that we’ve become so familiar with it that we overlook its uniqueness. “It’s a sustainable renewable resource. In the wet, wool’s hollow fibres absorb water and provide warmth to the wearer. Over eight hours, as it dries, a kilogram of wet wool produces the same heat as an electric blanket not many people know that. “If sheep grew polyester they would die,” he says with disgust. “Polyester cannot store moisture or heat. If set on fire, it melts and can cause severe burns while wool only chars and even protects at first.” His recipe for the survival of the wool industry is to find a unique way of using wool and then throw up protective walls around it so it cannot be stolen. He envisages a new wool fabric or new machinery, and hints that one of his secret projects may fit the bill. The recently developed woven wool shirts and keratin cosmetics are other examples. And just as important as top-end fashion fabrics could be industrial uses, such as fire-resistant home insulation, saddle blankets, blast blankets or stab-proof fabric. He has faith in New Zealand scientists to provide answers. “Farmers will have to take a long-term view. We will have to resist the temptation to sell off a technology for a quick capital gain, or we’ll find ourselves back where we are now hostage to China’s wool buyers.” Farming in Hawkes Bay in the early 1970s opened his eyes to the possibilities for wool. “Farming was hard work and I could see the long years of only gradually chipping away at the mortgage stretching ahead,” he says. “I was producing these great products, but once they left the farm they were out of my hands. Wool seemed to offer the best chance to make something more of it if I could get into manufacturing.” So he left farming with $20,000 cash, sold some polo ponies and looked for somewhere to start. He settled on Marton, because of its main-trunk rail link and because it had a dry-cleaning business for sale. The dry-cleaner provided a steady cash flow and the steam needed to press the clothing they hoped to make. It was 1975 and in those heavily regulated days, the number of knitting machines in the garment industry was limited by licence. He found a 1931 machine that a Petone mill owner was selling and convinced him to teach him how to use it. He and Allie would start work at 5am in the dry-cleaner and mid-afternoon he would travel to Petone for his lessons, not returning home until 9pm. It was a work pattern the couple were to follow for several more years. Their wool business began shakily, assembling garments for a Levin knitter. He remembers working into the night in a freezing-cold tin shed under one light bulb. “It wasn’t knitting, but we were learning the business,” he says. Then on spare evenings they began experimenting with knitting jerseys and sweaters. The breakthrough came when a Wool Board scientist told him of new technology that allowed the printing of designs on wool. With a regional development grant they were able to buy a modern German knitting machine and a loan helped them buy a boiler, dyehouse, dryer and winch to go in new premises. Their first jerseys, featuring printed Maori motifs and kiwi designs, were snapped up by tourists at bus stations in Wanganui and Palmerston North. Orders for 10,000 jerseys from Hallensteins and 20,000 from Warnocks followed. Ezibuy, Hugh Wrights and Farmers Trading became other regular customers. More knitting machines were bought as the orders increased. “The job just exploded. Suddenly, we were going like crazy,” Bary recalls. Exporting was the obvious next move. It began with a visit to a book fair in Las Vegas, where Bary offered to print university emblems on his jerseys. After the first 5000-jersey order, he had to hide. “I didn’t have the capacity to take more orders actually, I wasn’t sure I could do the 5000.” It was the ability to print, using technology known only in New Zealand, that was his big drawcard. Until then designs had been embroidered or woven. It was a stressful time. As orders increased and with some customers slow to pay, the Barys occasionally found themselves running out of money to buy wool. He remembers desk-thumping arguments with bankers as he fought to borrow up to $800,000 at a time. “It damn near killed me but I battled through,” he says. “Allie’s encouragement and support kept me going.” Through the 1980s and into the ’90s, the export business boomed. When the New Zealand dollar was floated, the American trade became uneconomic, but the Barys turned instead to Germany, attracted by its stable currency. Their German customers were affluent people who wanted quality products and the Barys lifted standards to meet the market. Bary travelled there twice a year and found custom in the huge mail-order business. More machines were bought and staff hired. At their peak they had 14 circular-knitting machines and 50 staff, producing 90,000 jerseys a year. But it couldn’t last. International manufacturing was changing. By the end of the ’90s, retailers were moving from the high street to shopping malls and the high rentals forced them to seek higher margins. As that happened, synthetic fabrics began to gain the upper hand. And China arrived on the scene. Its factories were churning out jerseys around the clock, and the Barys could not compete. With automation, they also lost the marketing advantage printing had given them. When their biggest German customer was bought by an American company it was time to call it a day. At the same time, back home, import tariffs were removed and the New Zealand market was wide open. For manufacturers, the loss of their “safe” home market to the Chinese was devastating. What saved the Barys was their specialist corporate and work jerseys, a line too far from the norm for the Chinese to bother with. Today’s output figures are commercially sensitive but Bary says they make “several thousand” jerseys a year. The farm, bought when the writing was on the wall, is now their biggest interest. It runs 4800 romney ewes with an average lambing of 130 per cent, 1300 replacement hoggets, 220 south devon cows and 200 red hinds. It also winters 90 steers and 90 heifers. Not surprisingly, the 38,000kg of wool produced each year is of special importance. Some of it finds its way on to his knitting machines as he experiments with new ideas. He says the emphasis on the environment gives wool a market edge over synthetics that it should be grasping. First, that unique, fully protected product must be found and then local industry used to produce a ready-made resource for manufacturers further up the value chain. And the drive for this has to come from the owners of the wool the farmers, the ones who should be showing their commitment by wearing it. “Going back to sheep farming has given me an insight into what farmers have to put up with,” he says. “They need to win some control of the industry and become the masters of their own fortunes. Otherwise, wool will become irrelevant to farming and that would be a tragedy.”Dominion Post