In the past few seasons Perendale wool has been enjoying significant price advantages over other crossbred wools. Currently a major factor has been that the trade as a whole has little demand for the coarser lustrous type wools with little fibre crimp, particularly when these wools become semi-cotted and discoloured. Such wools have severe technical limitations in the production of machine-made carpets, and more particularly for use in knitwear.
There are sound technical and market reasons for the promotion of a movement away from our coarser wool types to those more approaching Perendale wool.
The technical reasons have been discussed in a previous story. The market reasons can be summed up by two main factors:
- The ever increasing demand from China for finer apparel wools; and
- The drive by machine-made carpet manufacturers for greater automation, ‘higher-tech’ carpet production placing tighter specification on fibre properties.
Perendale wool, having in the main the combination of being both bulkier and one to two microns finer than the majority of Romney and Coopworth wools is more suited to these demands and can be expected to continue to enjoy price premiums.