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Bracing for the Storm

From:Nanjing woolmarket       Date:2020-09-30 00:08:33       Share:

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IWTO
President Wolf Edmayr


The global economy currently finds itself in a once-in-a-lifetime pandemic and subsequent crisis. We need to find a way through and prepare to benefit from the recovery process. IWTO President Wolf Edmayr investigates the options.

The start of the new wool market season brought even more disappointing wool auction prices and subsequent high pass-in rates. The retail shutters are only halfway up, with restricted foot fall and customer confidence at a 100-year low. Wool processing plants have fired up the lines but are running at reduced capacity. The wool fibre shed almost half its value, year to date.

My report last year this time spoke of crippling droughts, low production volumes and the ongoing trade war having a negative influence on the wool market. Little did we know! The current crisis could not have come at a worse time for our members and industry as a whole.

We have survived difficult trading times before and history tells us that this too will pass. Successful businesses will cut their costs, simplify structures and focus on survival during this storm, while focussing their efforts on strategies to grasp new opportunities with the first sight of recovery.

We hear about The Great Reset, forced onto world leaders and policy makers, as they have to consider our accumulative footprint and growing demand on scarce land and water resources. We read about Green Deals and a renewed urgency to create a Circular Economy, which our young generation has been asking for during recent protest actions.

The pandemic has put a spotlight on health and wellness, with Underlying Conditions becoming a dreaded diagnosis. Emerging from the chaos of 2020 one thing is clear: health is not merely the absence of disease but a state of physical, mental, and social wellbeing. Of the many fibres on the market, how many can say – backed up with peer-reviewed research – that they have an active, positive effect on health and wellness?

Wool is unique in many respects, but its natural abilities to boost wellbeing to those who wear it is truly one of a kind. The virtues of wool in both skin and sleep health stem from the fibre’s ability to maintain a more stable microclimate between the garment and the skin.

A good night’s sleep boosts immunity. According to the latest science, wool can get you to restful sleep faster and keep you there for longer, which will have a positive outcome on your health. Worn next to the skin in base layers, wool provides a “last line of defence” for military and first responders.

In the post-Covid world and for some time to come, health – in all of its forms – takes priority. If there’s ever been a time to choose wool, that time is most certainly now. We need to be ready for the revival and offer wool as part of the solution in the recovery of our precious planet. The opportunities will present themselves and we must not be caught napping.

I wish you well during this testing time and hope to be able to meet in person again very soon.