Country Life: NZ's biggest wool scouring factory rises from the flood

When shearing reaches its busiest period on farms around the North Island from December through to March, the WoolWorks scouring plant in Hawke's Bay will process around 165,000 kilograms of wool each day.

It's critical infrastructure for the farming sector, transforming fleece from hill country shearing sheds into the clean, dry, pressed, product ready for manufactures to make into carpets and building products.

The factory just south of Napier at Awatoto transforms greasy wool, neatly packing it into bales using an impressive new German wool press that exerts 600 tonnes of pressure. The bales then start a long journey on shipping containers to manufacturers around the world.

"To put that back to sheep numbers, that's around about 50,000 sheep. So that's every day. It's a lot of farms, so it's big numbers," WoolWorks chief executive Rosstan Mazey told Country Life.

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Think about doing your laundry 10 times over - that's roughly what happens to wool from thousands of sheep every day at the busy plant. You can hear forklifts buzzing and beeping as they carry heavy bales around the floor. Wash basins bubble, dryers rumble, and the wool press thumps.

Despite some rough times for the sector, Mazey believes there's a bright future for the country's wool exports.

He points to one innovative customer, Ngamatea Station, which sends its scoured wool to be made into tennis-ball felt, used on the courts of the world's biggest Grand Slam tournaments.

"We've had a tricky last year with the amount of greasy wool that's been taken out of New Zealand, primarily to China," Mazey said.

"We're seeing the situation change quite quickly over there just in the last couple of months.Their appetite for greasy wool from New Zealand is starting to reduce.

"We're also seeing renewed interest for other scoured wool markets, particularly from Europe and India."

Industry leaders are also hopeful that the India Free Trade Deal will strengthen ties with Indian manufacturers and, in turn, boost demand for New Zealand wool.

The vast majority of the wool scoured at WoolWorks - about 85 percent - goes to China, India, the United States and Europe, where it's made into rugs, bedding, carpets and building materials.

About 15 percent stays in New Zealand. Carpet and rug manufacturers Bremworth and Godfrey Hirst continue to manufacture fine wool carpets here.

Wool is also becoming more popular in building design, with Auckland-based Autex making insulation and acoustic panels. Another Kiwi company based in the South Island, Terra Lana, also makes insulation, acoustic control and landscaping products using scoured wool.

A factory that went under

You wouldn't know it now, but three-and-a-half years ago, the WoolWorks factory was inundated when stopbanks along the Ngaruroro River gave way during Cyclone Gabrielle.

During the cyclone the water rose to around two metres. Processing equipment was submerged and thick, silt-laden mud was left across the factory floor. It was months before the water subsided and the rebuild lasted more than a year.

WoolWorks Group Assurance Manager Tony Cunningham said the rebuild was significant. There was a full rewiring of the plant. New electronic monitoring equipment was installed, while damaged machines were pieced back together by engineers.

Cunningham said it's crucial that New Zealand maintains its wool-scouring capacity, despite some companies sending greasy wool offshore. He said most of Australia's wool is now scoured in China. The manufacturer is also grappling with high energy costs and declining sheep numbers.

And while some sheep farmers have switched in recent years to Wiltshire sheep which shed their fleece, many are sticking with traditional meat and wool breeds such as the Romney as wool prices inch up.