Handling the Threat to Wool from Synthetics

Abstract

Chapter 9 reports that at first after World War II New Zealand woolgrowers did not see the threat from synthetics as a major threat. Growers paid for the International Wool Secretariat (IWS) to deal with the threat but growers only vaguely understood what the IWS did and doubted that it helped them. The Wool Board did not share the doubts and doubled the woolgrowers’ contribution in 1964 causing woolgrowers to question more definitively how they benefitted from IWS activities. Following a major price collapse of 1966–1968, woolgrowers doubted even more strongly the IWS’s value. The Wool Board’s financial weaknesses in the late 1960s persuaded the government to contribute to IWS costs but the government shared the woolgrowers’ doubts. Eventually, in the 1970s, the Wool Board began to share those doubts and started, itself, to promote New Zealand wool sales overseas.