Shearer training remains Australian Wool Innovation's number one priority amongst many industry challenges highlighted at the peak body's AGM last week.
AWI chief executive officer John Roberts told the meeting that a year ago there were already plenty of challenges for the wool industry, but it now faced even more.
"These included casualisation, geographical tensions and a desperate shortage of shearers," Mr Roberts said.
"Twelve months on these challenges remain, but we have a number of additional factors to contend with including the war in Ukraine and the skyrocketing energy price that it brings.
"Domestic floods causing widespread damage across most of the eastern states, the threat of FMD, the rampant spread of Barbers Pole worm, the underlying demand for provenance and traceability and the push for sustainability."
READ MORE:
AWI's chairman Jock Laurie said he believed AWI was ahead of the game on traceability, and were in a strong position to take it forward.
"A lot of the traceability stuff was developed by Wool Q. Traceability and sustainability is absolutely critical," Mr Laurie said.
But he said the wool industry's peak marketing body was focussed on building demand for wool during challenging economic circumstances internationally.
"From a board point of view we do a lot of investment in regard to continuing to build demand for wool to create more competition in the marketplace," he said.
"On-farm level we are making sure we are doing research and development to minimise the cost of production as much as we can."
He said shearer training remained the number one issue for woolgrowers. And the rising costs have the potential to drive people in the industry away.
"It is really critical that we can actually let our people get their sheep shorn," he said.
"And get them shorn at a price that is fair and reasonable. Some of the escalating prices that we are hearing around shearing is doing incredible damage to people and driving them away from the industry.
"We are seeing a challenge when it comes to people wanting to stay in the industry because of the costs that are being associated with that."
He said wool growing has to be competitive against other commodities on-farm, including sheepmeat and grains.
"We need to be able to maintain numbers to maintain production," he said.
Mr Laurie said other then land use, bushfires, the current floods, the international economic conditions, defending wool as a natural fibre were all added challenges.
"The combination of building demand and research and development to find "better ways, better chemicals" to reduce the on-farm cost of production will keep wool competitive in the challenging land use environment in Australia," he said.
Mr Laurie said the current 1.5 percent grower levy meant AWI was operating in a "very constrained financial environment".
"One-and-half percent at the last WoolPoll was the decision of wool growers. That's fine, but what it does is take 25pc of our income away and we now need to manage the company," he said.
Mr Roberts said the board of AWI has never looked in better shape.
"We have a strong, cohesive and supportive board who communicate and listen to both stakeholders and AWI staff," he said.
"And we have a new strategic plan that has been developed with real industry input."
He said consultation structures were open and inclusive which affords AWI highly valuable input and feedback from which to learn and evolve as a company.
The meeting was told several senior staff were leaving the company including research general manager Jane Littlejohn, company secretary Jim Story, and former national events manager Wendi Ridgley.
AWI holds director elections every two years, the last director election was in 2021 with the next director election in 2023.
The meeting did not consider any motions.
