Wool is a dilemma.
The fleece of the sheep needs to be shorn annually, for the sheep’s welfare. Shearing, however, puts the sheep at risk of injury from not being handled carefully enough during the fleece shearing process.
Nowadays the shearing and packing of a fleece can cost more than the price that can be obtained for it.
Over a long past, wool was a desirable commodity. More recently wool has struggled in appeal compared with entirely human-made fibres - these latter having the attraction that they are very practicable to produce and, usually, to maintain also.
Along with these dilemmas regarding wool directly, are surrounding changes to the old-style processes of taking wool to reach form of a product - garment, cloth etc, and which may include elements moving about the globe in a complicated way for the final item to be achieved. And then with further movement likely required for the product to connect with its consumers across the world.
Wool has been a product in the UK since Roman times. Its great heyday came in the medieval period; this burgeoning begun and fostered by monasteries, Cistercian most particularly, which acted as centres of sheep farming, and of gathering, sale, distribution and export of wool. Wool textile production in the UK followed, and with industrial processes enabling. The focus of wool cloth-making in England was the West Riding of Yorkshire, with Leeds and Bradford being the main centres for the industry. Scotland developed a particular wool-products focus in its border region; for example in the towns of Galashiels and Hawick.
From a start in the eighteenth century and onwards, the major wool production mantle moved from Europe to the New World. The introduction of Merino sheep into Australia was key. By 1930 the International World Textile Organisation [IWTO] had been formed, to represent the interests of the global wool industry. In essence, in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries - as The IWTO Specifications for Wool Sheep Welfare (2020) provide indication - the main wool production countries of the world have become Australia and New Zealand, the USA, South Africa and Argentina and Uruguay. And as the dominant country producing goods made from wool is China.
In 1937 Southern Hemisphere wool growers created the International Wool Secretariat [IWS] which had the aim to encourage wool sales to the Northern Hemisphere. Some European countries then established IWS offices for promoting wool use and international trade in wool. In 1968 an IWS technical centre opened, to major aplomb and fanfare, in the UK on the Ilkley outskirts - well-placed between Leeds and Bradford. Fronting the purpose-built IWS building (now called the International Development Centre) is a massively striking three-sided sculptural mural ‘The Story of Wool’ designed by renowned public artist, William Mitchell. The front portion of the mural displays a ram and ewes, the left-hand portion depicts processes of manufacturing wool yarn, and the right-hand portion shows the structure of wool fibre. The overall production was so strong and apparently confident, but was it ‘crying in the wind’ in a situation where, the bombast notwithstanding, past-time was already arrived for the UK wool textile industry?
The Story of Wool
William Mitchell
In 1950 another organisation in the UK concerned with wool was set up. This was the British Wool Marketing Board [BWMB] whose headquarters were placed in Bradford. It was owned by UK sheep farmers and had as its objective to get best return on wool for wool producers.
Since that which the IWS centre of 1968 maybe represented - a last gasp of ‘the wool industry that was’ - the UK has been trying to regather pace in the dimension of wool and find a renewed wool role.
The BWMB is now named British Wool. It remains in farmers’ ownership and its headquarters remain at Bradford, though also there are regional offices in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. British Wool’s work it states to be ‘to collect, grade, market and sell British wool on behalf of our producers to the international wool textile industry’.
In 2010 the Campaign for Wool was created. It describes itself as ‘a global endeavour, initiated by its Patron His Royal Highness The Prince of Wales, in order to raise awareness amongst consumers about the unique, natural, renewable and biodegradable benefits offered by the fibre.’
Meanwhile the IWTO, as the global organisation speaking on the part of the wool industry, now portrays its role as ‘promoting a sustainable future for wool’.
It can be seen that the wool scene has changed over time. For the UK, in the last two centuries large scale competition from overseas has produced a challenging environment for the home wool industry. And overall, for quite some while, the wool industry has been global and with a global outlook. Much of UK wool is coarse in type and so this limits its range of use.
But are pendulums now swinging back? Concerns for the well-being of the planet, new awareness of globalisation’s downsides, can put local selling and marketing, and wool as natural, biodegradable, fibre, in favourable light.
But here dilemmas again.
Can higher welfare standards for sheep be produced overall, and especially during the shearing process, in a situation of wool only selling at a low, or maybe even less than cost of production, price? Can new, and enough, uses be found for wool, particularly wool of a kind to have restricted function? Will an adequate quantity of the market ‘return to wool’, and when wool is not as easy and labour-saving to wash as some other types of fibre? Can enough income be gained from wool deployed for altered purposes - such as filling mattresses, or home insulation - and if a market is confined to being only small and local? With ‘green’ processes used for wool, towards sustainability, would the consumer be willing to pay the cost?
In essence, can doing the right thing, throughout the entire wool provision process, render viable earning for the provider?
1st May 2021