The Accidental Smallholder Forum
Food & crafts => Crafts => Topic started by: Bionic on September 07, 2016, 09:32:29 am
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Had a lovely afternoon out yesterday with our spinners group at the Wool Board.
Fleece, from the worst to the best were laid out on a table for us to see and he talked us through each fleece. He then explained how the system works there, how much the men are expected to get through each day and the commercial buying process for fleece. Apparently 70% of our fleece goes to China.
Afterwards we were like children in a sweetie shop when we were able to choose fleece for ourselves.
We came away, a very happy bunch of ladies.
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But did he tell you how little they pay for a decent fleece .... I pay shearer more!
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So is that part of BWMB?
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Yes, Rosemary it is. All of the wool that goes to Brecon gets sorted and then is sent to Bradford where it is analysed for its micron count etc and then gets sold on.
Linda,
Yes, they pay very little and farmers who send in fleece with lots of straw etc get money deducted, We paid very little for the fleece that we got but I guess half a dozen fleece are like a drop in the ocean.
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we just get about enough to pay the shearer for our fleeces! [member=26580]Backinwellies[/member] >:( I was talking to our shearers and they said that the wool marketing board are looking for any excuse to knock money off, whether it be wool with some dirt on, or whether it be (wait for it.....) a black fleece in a bag full of white fleeces, yes they have to be in seperate bags or you get penalised for it. Apparently Lleyn fleece gets a higher price than most, I think it comes in around about 90-£1.00 something per fleece, as it is used for spinning and stuff, I think. Getting back to the original thread, sorry [member=8989]Bionic[/member] for diverting the subject. I had no idea that so much went to china, Britain was quite a big wool processing industry back in the day, some of the rarer breeds of today were the most popular for wool production. I remember seeing on a programme that they wash the fleeces in big machines in the factory to wash away all the lanolin before it is spun/processed, it also washes away the dirt too :)
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A lot of tosh is talked by a lot of people about the BWMB ! :rant:
Yes they penalise you for putting coloured fleeces in with white. Unadulterated white fetches more than white with some grey in it. You can get repeatable dyeing only from dyeing on all white fibre. If there are coloured fibres in there too, you get a very attractive marling or heathering effect, but the bale of wool so contaminated will not fetch as high a price as an all-white bale.
If you have coloured and white sheep, put the coloured fleeces in a different sack, then they can pay you the top price for the grade for your white fleeces. If they are all in together, they have to downgrade the white fleeces because of the contamination with coloured fibres.
Our commercial sheep have particularly excellent fleeces and we usually average £3-£3.50 per fleece. It can be hard to work out your price per fleece because of the way the Wool Board do the payments - each year you get an advance on the clip you submit plus the balance due on last year's clip. They have to do it this way as they don't know what they can pay everyone until they've sold all the fleeces.
A few years back, the advance turned out to have been way too high because global wool prices crashed, so the next year the balance payments were very low. And because there was a strong likelihood that the prices would remain low, the advance payment for the next year was also set low. So in that year, a lot of farmers got a cheque that was risible, and often didn't cover the cost of shearling the sheep. But the BWMB has worked hard since, developing markets for our national clip, and prices are much better now.
I am, as you can probably tell, something of a champion for the BWMB ;)
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I'm glad you enjoyed your day outing, Sally.