The Western Australian region will not have a wool scouring plant in its area after the Jandakot Wool Washing Company, decided to close operations, which had been running since the last 77 years. The company had been processing wool for export since the last seven decades as well as selling wool grease to lanolin factories.
At its peak in the 90's, the region had four wool scouring plants, but with the closure of Jandakot, it has been left with none. Many reasons are attributed to the closure, among which the primary reason is the slowdown in demand from its biggest buyer; China, in the last few years, since China started investing in its own wool scouring plants.
The economic downturn and the resultant recessionary global trends had tended the final blow and thereby leaving 35 workers of the plant unemployed. China has developed a cost competency in scouring of wool which is unmatched in the world which has led to a 70 percent drop in scouring operations in the last decade in Western Australia.
fibre2fashion.com spoke to the Managing Director of the company. Mr Lindsay Mitchell who said, “Yes, we have stopped processing wool from last Friday. Main reason for taking this step is lack of requisite volumes to enable the wool processing, so we had no other alternative, but to shut down the plant.”
Fibre2fashion News Desk - India