Brothers take the leap and bring business home

AFTER years building up their wool brokerage business, a major investment by Rob and Alistair Calvert has taken their enterprise to the next level. 

The brothers run Wool Solutions and when faced with spiraling costs for wool storage, they decide to build their own. 

After two years of planning and construction their purpose-built facility is now operating in the new industrial area at Western Junction in the state’s north. 

They previously sent all their wool bales to Melbourne for testing and storage. 

“We were sending them to Melbourne for testing and paying a third party to do that,” Rob said.

“But we’ve seen a fairly dramatic increase in cost particularly over the last couple of years so that prompted us to explore the option of bringing it back here.” 

Rob said changes in shipping since Covid meant the advantage of storing wool in Melbourne once it was sold and prior to being transported was also no longer there.

Alistair said while they had not initially planned to build a storage and testing facility there were definite advantages. 

“It gives us really good visibility over every thing,” he said. “We’ve got full control I suppose, even though the service we were get ting in Melbourne was excellent and continues to be ... but the cost of the square metre of concrete in Western Melbourne had just gone through the roof.” 

While the facility has been a significant investment, Alistair said they had now put a lid on their storage and testing costs, which would benefit both the business and their clients. 

“The industry is quite unique in that wool is quite uneconomical to store,” he said. 

"In a traditional wool store, you stack the bales four high. So, the benefit of developing and designing a building that is fit for purpose is we’re not going to design something that has all this space up in the air that we don’t need.” 

Construction started in December last year and the building was officially opened in October. 

The facility has 4000 sq m of space and can store about 5500 wool bales. 

“We’ve modelled that it should be able to handle our existing business through here,” he said. 

“We’ve got scope at the back of the block and we’ve already submitted a development application for another shed for expansion purposes if we need it so that future proofs the business a bit.” 

The wool can either be bales stored prior to sale or bales that have already been purchased but will be stored until the buyer is ready to ship it.

Alistair said once they arrive at the store, the wool bales are catalogued in lots in the computer system using wool specifications from the wool classer. 

The brothers have also invested in a new core testing line bought from a company in South Australia. 

The testing machine can take both core samples and a grab sample. 

The grab sample is used for wool sales and that is what buyers inspect prior to purchase. 

“That sample is what buyers inspect to represent the lot,” Alistair said.

The days of going down to Lindsay Street and seeing all the bales lined up there, that very rarely happens now. Everything is sold by separation now.” 

Testing of the core samples is done by the Australian Wool Testing Authority in Melbourne. 

Rob said the previous trend to centralise storage of bales in Melbourne, Sydney and Freemantle was changing due to the increasing costs of storage in those major centres. 

He said in a lot of cases storage was moving back to more regional areas. 

The investment in the wool store has also seen an increase in staff numbers at the business. 

“We’re very proud of the fact we’ve had to put on a couple of staff both directly and indirectly. There has been an appointment by the Wool Testing Authority to support our facility as well so it’s nice to see that happen,” Alistair said. 

Despite challenging conditions in the last couple of years the brothers remain confident in the future of the wool industry. 

They said while the market was in a downturn due to global economic conditions, they anticipate once there is an increase in consumer spending and underlying confidence demand for wool will increase. 

“Right now is a moment in time and we’ve been in the industry long enough to know it goes through ebbs and flow,” Alistair said. 

“We remain very, very confident in the future of the wool industry.” 

Rob said while the new facility was a significant commitment, it was not a difficult decision. 

“We were handling a certain number of bales already because fortunately we’d had the support of Tassie growers to get to this point,” Rob said. 

“We had the established business, so we just had to decide what was the best set up to service that.”

One sector that is performing exceptionally well at present is the ultra-fine wools. 

The brothers said a shortage of cash mere in the global market was seeing very strong demand or the very fine wools of 13 microns or finer. 

“There have been 20 odd bales sold between Australia and New Zealand this year that are under 13 microns and we’ve probably sold 25 per cent of them, which is pretty amazing for Tassie,” Alistair said.

In Tasmania they said the recent dry conditions had seen this year’s clip yield wool that is finer than usual, especially off younger sheep. 

Despite the dry conditions, the brothers said the wool quality in Tas mania this year has remained sound.