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Speaker 1: I've got some good news for wool and of course

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Speaker 1: we're using taxpayer money to finance bright ideas. Kee wee

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Speaker 1: wool Company, keep company rather, Wool Source has signed its

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Speaker 1: first commercial export order for its innovative wool particle products.

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Speaker 1: The deal is going to supply eight tons to a

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Speaker 1: Japanese personal care company. Andrew Morrison is the chair of

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Speaker 1: Wool Research Organization of New Zealand and with us Morning,

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Speaker 1: Andrew Willing Heather here, I am, I'm well, thanks mate.

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Speaker 1: What's an innovative wool particle product?

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Speaker 2: A wall particle product? As look, we were charged with

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Speaker 2: the set, I said, for God's sake, we're struggling a

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Speaker 2: bit in the second. We've got some really good traditional products,

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Speaker 2: but can you go and find us some new uses,

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Speaker 2: some new markets and some new customers. So basically we've

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Speaker 2: been running about a seven year research program deconstructing strong

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Speaker 2: wall down to that molecular level and then finding applications

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Speaker 2: for it. So this was our first shipment going into

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Speaker 2: the personal care market. Particles are a precursor to air

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Speaker 2: absolute Holy Grails, which is powders in pigments. So yeah,

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Speaker 2: it's great break and getting their first ship there, and

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Speaker 2: pretty excited about that.

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Speaker 1: So are these guys in Japan sticking it in the

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Speaker 1: old cosmetics?

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Speaker 2: Yeah, these are going into personal cares. We've done a

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Speaker 2: big bunch of research, you know, the the hydrolyzed carrat

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Speaker 2: and or the shampoo market's massive, the pet shampoo market

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Speaker 2: is massive. These particles we use, we're also working with companies,

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Speaker 2: you know, to infuse them into sort of a bier

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Speaker 2: retardancy capability and the built environment. These particles are precursors

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Speaker 2: to powders. Powders we use in the packaging coding for

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Speaker 2: sort of you know those cosmetic packaging or food grade packaging.

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Speaker 2: And then finally if we and we're well down the

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Speaker 2: path of cracking that market into the pigments market. You know,

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Speaker 2: pigment is a massive market forty billion US screen printing,

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Speaker 2: flexo printing, and digital printing. So we are using these

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Speaker 2: these deconstructed wall molecular particles to carry their pigments. So

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Speaker 2: pretty excited about that.

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Speaker 1: Do you know, Andrew, what this deal is worth for

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Speaker 1: the Japanese company? I mean, does it does it cover

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Speaker 1: off the three and a half million that the taxpayers

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Speaker 1: have put into this?

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Speaker 2: This is the startup. I mean the reality is now,

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Speaker 2: look this is their first shipment, so we've got a

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Speaker 2: we've got a sheep industry that's struggling out there. That's

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Speaker 2: why we're doing this work. You know, we have a

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Speaker 2: lot of talk around land use change trees on sheep farms.

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Speaker 2: Sheep beef state in New Zealand is about eighty percent

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Speaker 2: of the New Zealand sort of farming estate. For God's say.

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Speaker 2: You know, we've got two point six million hectors a dairy,

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Speaker 2: about eight million hectares of sheep and beep state. We've

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Speaker 2: got to make that set the profitaboard again. And that's

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Speaker 2: what we're doing here. So look, look this is a startup.

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Speaker 2: This is a five tech startup. This is the first

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Speaker 2: shipment and this only comes out of our pilot plant.

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Speaker 2: So we're just in negotiatings with partners around building our

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Speaker 2: first commercial facility build. So you know, this is a

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Speaker 2: long hall set of game and to be fair, this

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Speaker 2: is just the first run on the board today.

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Speaker 1: Good stuff. We'll best of luck with it. Sounds promising.

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Speaker 1: Andrew Morrison's Chair of All Research Organization of New Zealand.

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