Verification of Australian Merino wool textiles

01 Mar '07

2 min read

AWI recently announced Verification of Australian Merino (VAM), the new procedure to assist retailers worldwide who are interested in validating the Australian Merino content of their products.

VAM involves working with leading retailers, garment manufacturers, knitters, weavers, spinners, and topmakers, in collaboration with the Australian Wool Testing Authority (AWTA), to ensure the verification of Australian Merino is simple, practical and precise.

The system utilises the fact that more than 99% of Australian Merino wool grown, is sold with the aid of test certification provided by AWTA – where the major technical aspects of the wool sold, such as fibre diameter, are quantified.

These Test Certificates, and the unique Certificate numbers for each, allows the measured attributes of top, yarn, fabric and garments to be compared with the wool which is originally grown and sold in Australia.

The value of introducing such a system is that it enables Australian woolgrowers to differentiate their product from that of other producing countries. This is becoming increasingly important as consumers look for quality assurances; finer, softer garments and a better understanding of the garments they are buying.

A critical element of the system is the sharing of extra information between the various commercial players in the wool processing pipeline, and provision of samples for objective comparison against original raw wool test certificates.

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