On the one hand, the auction system is tried, tested and understood. On the other, direct marketing is also tried and tested by a few, but not widely used.

Giant German spinner, Sud Wolle, has challenged farmers to ditch the auction system.

It wants bulk bale lines that can be delivered straight from the producer, without the mix-and-match the auction system caters for.

Sud Wolle is the world’s largest spinner, putting 180,000 bales of Merino wool through its facilities in Germany, Poland and China.

At NSW Farmers Association’s recent wool forum in Armidale, Sud Wolle’s purchasing manager, Gotz Giebel, staked out an alternative supply chain model.

Key to the company’s interest in bulked lines of wool with little in-shed preparation is the research, established for more than two decades, which has found wool from within a woolgrower’s Merino flock tends to have a high degree of uniformity that gives it reliable performance in the topmaking stage.

“For more than a decade we have been working in collaboration with direct marketers and topmakers to capitalise on this internal uniformity,” he said.

“We are convinced the results of processing bulk-prepared components of comparable wool clips generally delivers a more uniform product than from processing blends made up from many different clips.

“As much as this may provide advantages to us, I understand it also paves the way for sometimes significant economies of scale to be achieved from the time of shearing to the point where the greasy wool enters the scour.”

Producers can do minimal in-shed preparation, perhaps limited to removing dark and medullated fibre, before baling fleeces.

From The Land, May 22, 2008.