From sheep to shop: Investigating alternative markets for wool

Wool is the most complex, breathable fibre on earth. It can absorb 10 to 30 times its weight in water or oil (10 times as much as any synthetic) and is historically used in both hot and cold climates. However, despite its usefulness in clothing, fabric, yarn, felt and carpets, low prices and increasing popularity of synthetic fibres are forcing sheep farmers to look for alternative markets for their fleeces.

credit: Second Nature

UK wool prices have been fluctuating over the past few years. This, alongside plummeting lamb prices, has increased the pressure on the British Wool Marketing Board (BWMB) to find alternative uses for the 36.3m kg of greasy wool produced by its 67,000 registered producers in Britain. "Even in a buoyant market, wool is considered to be of little commercial value, extremely low prices are paid and there is no incentive for producers to improve quality," said BWMB chairman Frank Langrish in a speech earlier this year. "Large amounts are often thrown away and, at the same time, European textile factories are processing imported wool from the Southern Hemisphere."

"Finding alternative uses for wool has been an important element of the BWMB's work over the last two to three years," BWMB's marketing manager John Fox told New Agriculturist. "Making new consumer products with lower conversion costs is a prerequisite for restoring market advantage to wool processors, particularly in advanced economies, which will in return stimulate consumer interest and increase returns to woolgrowers. One step processing methods, using non-woven technologies originally developed for synthetic materials, offer the wool industry an opportunity to both lower the cost of manufacture and the flexibility of being able to produce a wide range of materials on the same equipment," said Mr Fox. "The advantage of non-wovens is that you can convert scoured (washed) wool quickly and cost effectively to produce a whole range of products for use in agriculture, equestrianism, geo-textiles, bedding, upholstery and apparel which have added value."

Insulation and mulch

credit: Second Nature

Inspired by wool's insulating properties, a British sheep farmer Christine Armstrong, investigated and later marketed sheep's wool as insulation for houses. After two years with the University of Leeds in research and development stages, Ms Armstrong started her business 'Second Nature' and launched the product - Thermafleece - which is suitable for a variety of roof, wall and flooring insulation applications in newly built houses and older constructions. "We have not developed Thermafleece to be a cheap alternative to other insulation materials such as glass fibre, in fact it costs significantly more. Specifiers and builders who have shown interest in our product see added value in its ecologically sound nature and in the extra benefits wool brings to a building's environmental performance including summer cooling, winter warming and condensation control," said Ms Armstrong, at the launch of the product in 2001.

The wool used is bought via the BWMB and is from British hill sheep farmed throughout the UK including varieties such as Herdwick and Swaledale with coarser fleeces that are not in high demand in the international woolen textiles market, but may be used to create a non-woven wool blend with excellent insulating properties, comparing favourably with other fibrous insulation materials. However, because wool is a natural fibre from a fully renewable resource, the product life cycle has an ideal energy balance. The process required to convert fleece to Thermafleece expends only 14 per cent of the embodied energy used to make glass fibre insulation, thereby paying back manufacturing energy costs seven times faster. Thermafleece is also totally recyclable for use in other environmentally friendly ways at the end of its useful life, which is predicted to be in excess of 50 years.

Meanwhile, in Vermont USA, sheep farmers are investigating whether wool that doesn't make the grade for the textile industry, can be sold as mulch at construction sites to prevent erosion. The state's 500 farmers raise 18,000 sheep and lambs which produce around 115,000lbs of wool every year. Since the end of a federal subsidy in the early 1990s wool prices have plummeted and shearing was beginning to cost more than the return on the wool. Headed by sheep farmer and livestock specialist with the University of Vermont Co-operative Extension Charlie Parsons, three year trials began at three sites in June 2000. One inch thick blankets of loose wool held in place with plastic netting or cheese cloth were rolled onto a round tube and unrolled on areas of exposed soil on steep slopes. Commercial woven straw mats and loose hay were also applied to enable comparison between those and wool.

"I think I can say that wool will work equally well as the commercial mulch that we have compared it to," said Mr Parsons. There are a number of potential markets for the product, including highway departments, landscapers and forestry agencies. "The next challenge will be to figure out how to get the wool into a usable product at a competitive price."

Hi-tech applications

New Zealand is a major source of wool on the world market producing 189m kg of clean wool per year. In terms of volume it is second only to Australia which produces 439m kg annually. The Wool Research Organisation of New Zealand (WRONZ) researches new uses and markets for fleeces. Its new ventures include the creation of Keratec, a WRONZ-owned subsidiary company which was established in 2001 to commercialise a range of technologies relating to new products derived from keratin proteins found in the wool fibre.

Keratin, which makes up 95 per cent of the wool fibre, is one of nature's most successful materials," says Keratec. "In addition to its excellent physical properties, it is a highly functional biopolymer material, exhibiting many properties that synthetic materials and other proteins cannot achieve, making it ideally suited to the development of high-value, niche market product applications." These applications include cosmetic ingredients, medical materials, fine fibres and adhesives.

Another initiative of WRONZ and its partner Peratech Ltd in the UK is 'Softswitch Ltd' which is developing a patented 'smart textiles' technology. Softswitch makes fabrics touch sensitive and interactive enabling a variety of high-tech applications such as textile computer keyboards, jackets that interface with mobile phones and light switches embedded in curtains and carpets.

So from simple solutions such as house insulation and mulches, to hi-tech initiatives like Keratec, this fibre has more to offer than the humble woolly jumper. The next challenge lies in making those ideas commercially viable and launching them as desirable products, so that wool can keep its title as the earth's most useful fibre well into the 21st century.

For more information see:
Second Nature
British Wool Marketing Board
Wool Research Organisation of New Zealand (WRONZ)
Softswitch