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By Colleen Schreiber Throw away those blue and orange tarps, especially those that are frayed or weatherbeaten, or at least keep them away from shearing facilities. Don’t tie old poly tarps together and use them to shoo sheep into the pens. Be particularly conscious of hay baling twine; keep it picked up, and remove any baling twine prior to grinding hay. When possible, reduce contamination by taking a little extra time during shearing to prepare the clip. That’s the message wool buyers are sending to growers now that the shearing season is well underway across the country. The American Sheep Industry Association is also taking up the cause and making awareness of polypropylene contamination a paramount issue for the wool industry. To that end, they’ve implemented a certified shearing program whereby shearing crews agree to comply with certain best management practices. More than anything, it’s an educational program to make shearers and growers alike aware once again of the problems that poly contamination causes for the wool industry. "The idea is to reduce the risk of polypropylene," says Rita Kourlis-Samuelson, ASI deputy director of operations and wool marketing director. "Poly contamination is a multilevel problem, and we all need to participate to solve the problem." There has been a renewed push for an educational and awareness program because this past year was a particularly bad year for poly contamination. Ashley Bullock, director of corporate purchasing for Burlington Industries, a 22-year veteran of the company, says 2003 was the worst year he’s ever seen from the standpoint of polypropylene contamination in finished fabric. "There’s absolutely not another year to compare it to," Bullock says. "In previous years we would always have one or two top lots that would have some contamination. We’d deal with it for two or three weeks and then it would go away. "These problems started in November and December of 2002 and it ran the entire calendar year." Burlington uses two different types of top to make fabric for their government contracts. One is what they call a 64s, which is made from New Mexico, Texas and Territory type wools. The other is a 62s, which is mostly made from Territory type wools. The 62s, Bullock says, goes into a 100 percent wool fabric, and the 64s go into almost exclusively a wool/polyester blended fabric. While the company experienced a significant increase in poly contamination in both of their government top products in calendar year 2003, the greatest negative impact occurred in their 62s line. "Just on that one style, it cost us an additional $50,000 in handling and mending time," Bullock says. Polypropylene contamination is a "spun-in defect." What growers may not realize is that the only way to remove the poly once it’s in the fabric is to manually pick it out piece by piece with a pair of tweezers. When it’s pulled out, it leaves a gap in the fabric which then has to be mended. "Normally it takes 45 minutes to inspect 100 yards of fabric. We literally go through it yard by yard and pick out the poly," Bullock says. "This past calendar year it took us as long as 200 minutes to get through 100 yards of fabric. For the whole calendar year, we were averaging 120 minutes or more per 100 yards on this one style." Burlington traditionally buys the better-prepared wools. They haven’t changed anything in terms of their buying practices. In 2002 and 2003 they sourced their wools from the same places they’ve always sourced them — primarily from Texas, New Mexico and the Territory states, areas where poly contamination traditionally has not been a problem. There is much speculation about why poly problems were more pronounced this past year. Some blame it on drouth, thus more feeding and consequently more chance of contamination. That line of thinking fits in with the fact that the wool that went into the finished fabric with which Burlington had all the problems was actually wool purchased in late calendar year 2002 and early in calendar year 2003. Still, Bullock is hesitant to point to any one thing. The diminished size of the clip, he speculates, could also possibly have something to do with it. He makes a comparison to the Black Sea, which is said to be getting saltier as it shrinks. "There’s not more salt in the sea, just less water. The same could be said for the wool clip. We’ve always had a poly problem, but there’s less wool available today to choose from." The shearing shed, Bullock stresses, still provides the greatest opportunity for removal of any defect in a wool clip. "If it’s not removed at the shearing shed, the next time that we can truly get it out is in the finished fabric," he says. "The combing process won’t remove long vegetable matter and polypropylene." Bullock says he’s anxious to see if the situation improves once they get into the balance of the 2003 wool clip and the beginning of the 2004 clip. "We have changed our buying practices such that we will go back after our suppliers for retribution for poly contamination if it is in an excess amount," Bullock concludes. "If we go through this season and realize that this is now going to be standard operating procedure, we will have to adjust all our prices to compensate for the additional costs that are incurred. If that happens, then at some point it impacts the growers in the form of lower wool prices." Another reason poly contamination has come to the forefront once again is because American wools, now more than ever, have to compete in a global marketplace. Just five years ago the majority of the U.S. clip was processed and consumed right here at home. Today just the opposite is true. Some 50 percent of the U.S. clip is now exported, processed and consumed overseas. American wools are being sold in China, India and Europe, to name a few. Terry Martin, with Anodyne Inc. in San Angelo, points out that many of these newer users of American wools are just in the process of learning about the characteristics of the domestic clip. That means the good qualities as well as a few of the not so good characteristics, of which poly contamination heads the list of complaints. Simply put, poly contamination makes U.S. wools harder to sell on the world market. Two of the foreign combers with whom Anodyne does business are experiencing poly problems. "One foreign comber has made it a policy, after many years of suffering from poly contamination, to only use American wool in combing blends with other poly suspect types such as Romanian, Russian and Hungarian wools," Martin says. "Because of potential poly contamination, some of our best wools will never — as long as the situation remains unchanged — have a chance to compete for top dollar," Martin says. Growers may not realize it, he says, but the associated costs from poly contamination are already being passed back to the grower in the form of lower wool prices. "If a buyer suspects any wool of having poly in it, he automatically downgrades that wool," Martin stresses. A buyer has to do this because he knows that he will receive quality claims farther down the production chain, which will translate to payouts against those claims. Further, this cash would otherwise be available to pay growers higher prices for their wool." Eric Durand, commercial manager for Chargeurs Wool USA, says contamination is the number one issue with U.S. wool. He isn’t talking just about poly contamination, but jute contamination as well. The amount of money Chargeurs pays out in claims for poly contamination, Durand says, varies from year to year but generally it runs from $50,000 to $100,000 annually. "And that’s being selective with the clients we sell to," he points out. "There are some clients that I don’t sell to because it’s too risky. Yarn that goes into weaving, for example; we know we’re going to have problems if a defect shows up, and I know I’m going to have contamination, so I simply don’t sell to them. "So the losses are not only what we financially pay, it’s also what we lose in not having a customer or losing a customer who has a claim." While poly contamination isn’t an easy problem to remedy, Durand reiterates that there definitely are some management practices a grower can implement to reduce the problem. "We do the best we can where we can," he stresses, "and the first thing we need to work on is packaging." He’s not just referring to preparation of a clip but packaging of the clip itself. "The U.S. is the only civilized country that still uses sausage bags. I’m talking primarily about Texas," Durand says. "I don’t understand that. "We know where the jute contamination comes from, and it costs us. "It’s one type of contamination that we can eliminate." Proper packaging, he points out, is a direct cost saving for any mill. "Everyone buys wool on a clean delivered basis. That’s how we calculate prices, and then we deduct costs to get to a greasy f.o.b. price to the grower," Durand explains. "If I only get 35,000 pounds of wool on a truck instead of 40,000 pounds, that costs us in freight. If I have to rebale the wool, that’s another deduction. Anything extra that I have to do to the wool is a deduction to the grower," he points out. Darrell Keese, wool buyer for Forte, Dupee, Sawyer Co., offers similar thoughts. "I love this business, but poly contamination is about to put me out of business," he insists. He says his customers tell him that U.S. wools are great except for black fiber and poly. The black fibers, he points out, are easier to live with than the poly. "They can overdye the black fiber or not use it in pastels, but the poly ruins it," Keese says. "Consequently, they either bid less for it — they may offer the same price as cheaper foreign wool that has kemp or poly in it — or they simply don’t renew contracts." The potential for poly contamination tends to be magnified in farm flocks or in areas where sheep graze alfalfa or coastal fields. Those who shed or feed lambs in a confined operation tend to have a higher risk of poly contamination as well. But Keese insists that the poly problem is everyone’s problem for two reasons, the first being that poly contamination can be found in every region of the U.S. "Nobody can say their area is poly-free," Keese remarks. The second reason is that the average size of the individual clip has diminished so much that some wool companies are being forced to mix wools from one region or state with similar wools from another region. "We can’t sell a wool as all Texas or all Montana or all New Mexico anymore," Keese points out. "We’re selling a product 12 months out of the year, and to do that we have to put like wools together from all over the country." Keese says lately he’s seeing as much or more contamination from tarps as he is from baling twine. "As the wool comes out of the dryers, I have employees pulling the contamination. Half of what they’re pulling now is blue or orange tarp material." Contamination from these tarps, he opines, is worse than twine because it’s contamination that can be stopped easily enough. "It’s just carelessness. We can clean that up." He encourages growers to be at the shearing barn while shearing is in progress. "If the shearing crew has one of these tarps, you’re potentially taking the risk of getting discounted or getting a claim." Keese says he gets frustrated with growers who ask how much he’ll pay if they clean up their poly problem. "My response to that attitude is, ‘If you can’t clean it up, I’ll be out of a job and you’ll be out of the sheep business.’ That’s pure and simple. "If I see it, I discount it severely or I don’t buy it at all," he adds. Pendleton wool buyer Dan Gutzman says the two groups that can best affect whether a wool clip has poly or not are the shearers and the classers. Pendleton has not had as much problem with poly, and Gutzman attributes this to the fact that they only buy classed and skirted wools. It’s a practice they implemented in 1990. "Since we’ve been doing that, we’ve seen a large decrease in the amount of poly contamination we are finding in our fabric," Gutzman says. Pendleton pays a little better price for those wools. "We have a group of what we call regular growers. They shear the wool and send it to me with a classing sheet. I weigh it up, core it and make an offer to them, and it never gets out on the open market," he explains. Rupert, Idaho producer Henry Etcheverry is one of Pendleton’s regular growers. He’s been preparing his clip this way and marketing it to Pendleton for almost 14 years. Diane Looney is a free agent self-employed level four classer who has been classing Etcheverry’s wool for the last 13 or so years. Looney went through the American Sheep Industry Association wool classing program back in 1991. She classes wool from 80,000 to 100,000 head each year, primarily in southern Idaho. She’s worked with the same shearing crew for 11 years, and there is no poly contamination anywhere in that outfit. "The shearers are there to shear sheep; poly is my responsibility," Looney says, "and it is my primary focus." Ninety percent of the poly contamination she sees is from hay baling twine. "It sticks out like a sore thumb. It’s blue, orange or yellow. I tell these growers that they’ve got to get it off the ground before they can get it off the sheep. They have done so much better," Looney insists. "A few years ago Henry ran his sheep on an alfalfa hay field. There were baling twine tails left in the field. I stopped the crew that year and told Henry that he had to get more men on the skirting tables because the tails were showing up in the clip. He did, and we took care of the problem. He hasn’t run on a hay field since," she says. Looney appreciates the problems that poly contamination causes because she had the opportunity to tour one of Burlington’s plants when she was going through training. "They have to pick it out and then reweave the fabric. It’s time-consuming and very costly. "Wool is a wonderful product," she concludes. "I don’t care what grade it is, but if it’s tainted, you might as well be selling dog hair. That’s how I feel about it." |
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