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    Latest News from Merino NSW

    Questioning Marketing focus

    merino 02A SUREFIRE way of making Merino wool production more profitable is to spend less on promotion and more on research and development, says John Keniry, the recently retired chairman of the Co-operative Research Centre for Sheep Industry Innovation (Sheep CRC).

    Dr Keniry said industry politicians and "others" had successfully campaigned for increased spending on marketing and promotion in the years after the first WoolPoll in 2000 when growers voted for a two per cent levy on their wool sales with a heavy focus on R&D and no retail consumer marketing.

    Their decision was in line with recommendations of the Wool Future Directions Task Force headed by Ian McLachlan, which argued strongly against any spending on generic wool promotion.

    Dr Keniry, who chaired the first three WoolPolls, said this approach had been diluted over time with growers voting in 2012 to allow Australian Wool Innovation (AWI) to spend 60 per cent of their levies on promotion and marketing.

    Given current lacklustre wool prices, particular for superfine, Dr Keniry said growers should be questioning whether AWI's spending focus on marketing and promotion was the right policy for shareholders.

    He believed "no rigorous work" was being done to prove AWI promotion strategies were lifting Merino wool demand at retail level which, in theory, should increase returns to growers.

    In contrast, Dr Keniry said there was plenty of evidence that extra spending on sheep R&D would lift on-farm productivity and cut costs.

    The Sheep CRC and AWI have had a thorny relationship for some time which Dr Keniry puts down to the CRC's unswerving view that R&D pays off for producers.

    And he hasn't resiled from his view, first expressed in 2009, that AWI should be combined with Meat and Livestock Australia to produce a one-stop shop for beef and sheep research, promotion and marketing.

    Such a merger would produce significant savings on overheads and remove "a lot of the politics" out of who gets elected to the AWI board.

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    NSW Stud Merino Breeders Association Ltd
    NSW Stud Merino Breeders Association Ltd"Enhancing the value of the Merino"office@merinonsw.com.au
    Rebecca Cooper
    Executive Officer
    PO Box 6227
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