WOOL IN EUROPE

Wairarapa Times-Age, 31 July 1939, Page 3

WOOL IN EUROPE

INTEREST IN DISPLAYS WIDER AMERICAN MARKET. PRODUCTION OF STAPLE FIBRE. Though the production of staple fibre, an artificial wood-like material, manufactured from wood pulp, has increased many-fold since 1934, now outstripping the rayons and similar artificial materials and displacing wool in several fields, it is clear from world statistics that the countries which have gone furthest in the use of synthetic fibres have done so from economic necessity and not from choice. Germany, Italy and Japan are together responsible for more than 80 per cent of the total world production of these fibres. They are countries aiming at raw material independence, but they are, nevertheless, very much interested in wool and woollens. At the Leipzig fashion display earlier this year the wool stand staged by British manufacturers and the Wool Secretariat, representing New Zealand, Australian and South African wool-growers, attracted the widest Continental interest, and Italy has been as keenly interested in a later display made by the South African Government and the Secretariat at the Milan Fair, in April. The display took the form of an exhibition of high quality woollens arid worsteds, fine knitted materials, and underwear, with photographic backgrounds of South Africa, New Zealand and Australia.

Last month a combined display was made by the Secretariat and the recently formed Belgian Wool Committee at Brussels, so that from its original plan of encouragement of a wider use and of fostering 'a better appreciation of the possibilities of wool in Britain, the work of the Secretariat, whbse New Zealand representatives is Mr F. S. Arthur, has widened to the Continent of Europe, and also to the United States, where a branch office has been established. One of the most effective contacts with the Continent and the States has -.been the “wool library, which is a huge sample catalogue of standard and new weaves and materials, from long accepted suitings to this year’s printed woollens and gossamer evening fabrics. There is a tremendous field for an increase in the consumption of wool in the United States, where the per capita consumption of wool-representing 4.1 pounds of greasy wool per annum—is only one half that in Britain and in the Dominions, and with a population’ of one hundred and thirty millions, an increase of one pound of wool per capita would have a tremendously important influence on the United States demand in the world wool markets. The three wool-growing Dominions, through the Secretariat, have combined with British manufacturers in the staging of an attractive display at the New York Fair, and a good deal of publicity work is being conducted otherwise to interest Americans in woollen textiles to a greater extent than at present.