When Life as we know it erupts into Scale, Manufacturing and Transit

Productivity is a measure of how efficiently production inputs are being used within the economy to produce output. Growth in productivity is a key determinant in improving a nation’s long-term material standard of living. —Statistics NZ ….[yawn]

Since March 2006, Statistics NZ has produced a yearly release of official measures of annual productivity for the measured sector. These measures are vital to better understanding improvements in New Zealand’s living standards, economic performance, and international competitiveness over the long term. Productivity is often defined as a ratio between economic output and the inputs, such as labour and capital, which go into producing that output.

Productivity Statistics – information releases ….[ZzzZzzzz…………..]

****

Viddsee Published on May 18, 2016
Changing Batteries – A Robot “Son” Couldn’t Replace The Emptiness In Her Heart // Viddsee.com
‘Changing Batteries’ is a final year animation production made in Multimedia University, Cyberjaya, Malaysia. The story tells of an old lady who lives alone and receives a robot one day. Based on the theme ‘Change’, our story tells about their relationship development with one another through time.

Viddsee Published on Feb 23, 2016
Alarm – Relatable Animation For The Mornings // Viddsee.com
The story is about a salaryman living in a single apartment. But he has a problem getting up early in the morning. He would rather die than wake up early. He decides to set many alarm clocks everywhere in his apartment so he can get to work on time. The next morning, after struggling with his alarm clocks, he barely finishes preparing for work.

****

WIRED UK Published on Jul 5, 2016
Shenzhen: The Silicon Valley of Hardware (Full Documentary) | Future Cities | WIRED
Future Cities, a full-length documentary strand from WIRED Video, takes us inside the bustling Chinese city of Shenzhen. We examine the unique manufacturing ecosystem that has emerged, gaining access to the world’s leading hardware-prototyping culture whilst challenging misconceptions from the west. The film looks at how the evolution of “Shanzhai” – or copycat manufacturing – has transformed traditional models of business, distribution and innovation, and asks what the rest of the world can learn from this so-called “Silicon Valley of hardware”. Directed by: Jim Demuth

Future Cities is part of a new flagship documentary strand from WIRED Video that explores the technologies, trends and ideas that are changing our world.

—

BBC aired the documentary in November, with the following descriptor:

Best Documentary 2016 Shenzhen: The Silicon Valley of Hardware gives us an insider’s perspective on a system of creative collaboration that ultimately informs all of our lives.

The centre of the technology world may not lie in California’s Silicon Valley, but in the bustling marketplace of Huaqiangbei, a subdistrict of Shenzhen in China. This is where curious consumers and industry insiders gather to feast their eyes and wallets on the latest software, hardware, gadgetry, and assorted electronic goods. At the very start the film sets the scene to this fascinating technology mecca. A city populated by 20 million people, Shenzhen is the setting where advancement is most likely to originate at speeds that can’t be replicated in the States. The city’s vibrant and inventive tech work force takes over when the innovations of Silicon Valley become stagnant. The revolution may have started in the States, but its evolution is occurring in China. Working in collaboration, Shenzhen labourers craft unique upgrades and modifications to everything from laptops to cell phones. Their efforts then immigrate and influence the adoption of new products in other regions of the world. The infrastructure by which this is made possible is known as the ‘Maker movement’. In developer conferences and Maker exhibition fairs, tech geeks are encouraged to share their ideas freely with colleagues in the hopes that more open collaborations will form grander innovations. The film highlights how these attitudes stand in sharp contrast to the Western world where communications are secretive, monopolies are the norm and proprietorship is sacred. However, there are challenges faced by Shenzhen in maintaining their edge in the industry. While widely acknowledged as pioneers, Shenzhen’s prominence has faltered as the remainder of China has proven successful in their attempts to catch up. Adding to the frustrations, the government has interceded and moved manufacturing bases outside of the city. Meanwhile, figures from the world of investment financing have moved into the equation, and threatened to stifle creativity by imposing a more closed and impenetrable mode of operations.

****

### dailymail.co.uk 30 Oct 2013
Ever wondered how everything you buy from China gets here? Welcome to the port of Shanghai – the size of 470 football pitches
By Daily Mail Reporter
Whether it’s the car you drove to work in, the computer at your desk or your children’s toys strewn across their bedroom floor, there’s a very good chance they have come from here. This is the world’s busiest trading port which handles a staggering 32million containers a year carrying 736million tonnes of goods to far-flung places around the globe. Stretching as far as the eye can see, rows upon rows of containers lie stacked up at the Port of Shanghai waiting to be shipped abroad and bringing in trillions of pounds to the Chinese economy in the process. It’s this fearsome capacity that has helped China become the world’s largest trading nation when it leapfrogged the United States last year.
The port has an area of 3.94 square kilometres – the equivalent of 470 football pitches. China’s breakneck growth rate in recent years has been driven by exports and manufacturing as well as government spending on infrastructure. In the last eight years alone, capacity at the Port of Shanghai has ballooned from 14million TEUs (a unit which is roughly the volume of a 20ft-long container) in 2004 to more than 32million last year. The rapid expansion was largely thanks to the construction of the Yangshan Deepwater Port, which opened in 2005 and can handle the world’s largest container vessels. That port alone can now shift around 12million containers a year.
Shanghai’s location at the mouth of the Yangtze River made it a key area of development for coastal trade during the Qing dynasty from 1644 to 1912. In 1842, Shanghai became a treaty port, which opened it up to foreign trade, and by the early 20th Century it became the largest in the Far East. Trade became stifled after 1949, however, when the economic policies of the People’s Republic crippled infrastructure and development. But after economic reforms in 1991, the port was able to expand exponentially.
Read more

****

David Carrier Published on Jan 13, 2017
World’s Biggest and Busiest Port Ever Made – Full Documentary
The Yangshan Deepwater Port is connected to the mainland by the Donghai Bridge, the world’s longest sea bridge.

—

Posted by Elizabeth Kerr

This post is offered in the public interest.

*Images: (from top) Shanghai Map – topchinatravel.com, Donghai Bridge – topchinatravel.com, Yangshan Deepwater Port – meretmarine.com, embed.ly, reddit-com

Economist Liam Halligan says crude oil has gone into “bull market” territory!

Received from Douglas (Mick) Field
28 Aug 2016 at 1:00 p.m.

Message: Good summary here on the oil situation. Especially clear opening comment on the dependency on fossil fuels in the foreseeable future. But full article (warning: pay wall) also good on the situation re the economic battle for supply.

—

[sputniknews.com]

### telegraph.co.uk 27 Aug 2016 • 2:19PM
Why I’m sticking with my forecast of oil rising to $60 a barrel
By Liam Halligan
In the absence of a major financial meltdown, oil will end 2016 north of $60 a barrel,” this column stated at the turn of the year. It was a forecasting flourish possibly fuelled by one Christmas brandy too many. With just four months of 2016 to go, though, I’m sticking to my Yuletide view.
Attempting to predict the oil price is crazy. Yet no decent economist can afford not to. The world economy still revolves around oil –used in everything from transport and electricity generation to the production of plastics, synthetics and so much else. And for all the breathless talk about renewables, and the grim inevitability of growing nuclear dependence, we remain addicted to oil.
As recently as 2005, world crude consumption was just 84.7 million barrels a day. That’s since gone up to 95.1 million daily, a 12pc increase in just 10 years. And that rise came during a decade when global GDP growth was rather sluggish. Had the world economy not endured the 2008 financial crisis, and subsequent stop-start recovery, oil consumption would have grown even more. But still, for all the expansion of wind and solar, and endless hype about a “post-petroleum world”, oil consumption continues to rise relentlessly and that won’t change any time soon.
The oil price has surged this month, up from around $41 a barrel in early August to almost $52 last week, before falling back slightly. This 20pc-plus increase puts crude technically into “bull market” territory. This is striking, not least because from mid-June to the end of July, oil was in “a bear market”, having dropped over 20pc. Despite this summer volatility, though, the direction of travel is clear. Oil has been climbing steadily, if not always in a straight line, from its February low of $28 a barrel. This August rise in oil prices stems from market fundamentals on the one hand, and geopolitical speculation on the other.

Earlier this month, the highly respected International Energy Agency (IEA) published a report suggesting global crude supply will fall short of demand during the third quarter by nearly a million barrels a day. This projected deficit comes despite the fact that the Opec exporters’ cartel continues to pump like billy-o. Having traditionally restricted supply to keep prices high, Opec has over the last two years been doing the reverse, of course – flooding global markets with oil, lowering prices to squeeze high-cost US shale producers out of existence. Amidst record production by Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and UAE, total Opec output hit an eight-year high in July, up no less than 840,000 barrels a day on the same month in 2015. This Opec supply surge was more than offset, though, by the dramatic ongoing slump in output from producers outside Opec. Declines in the US, China, Canada and Mexico combined to push non-Opec production down by more than 1.1 million barrels a day compared to July 2015. […] If there is a deal in Algiers, and it binds with Opec holding together, and the Russians staying on board then my end-of year oil prediction, in the absence of a Lehman-style global meltdown, will almost certainly come true. Such geopolitical stargazing has helped push up oil prices this month. During the first week of August, short crude oil positions on the NYMEX, one of the world’s leading commodity exchanges, were at a 10-year high. A large number of traders, in other words, thought oil was set to fall back towards $30. That view has now been thoroughly trounced, with the resulting “short squeeze” helping to drive this latest 20pc oil price rise. Aside from speculation and diplomatic wrangling, though, there’s growing evidence of an emerging supply-demand deficit. Buried in the IEA’’s latest report is the significant observation that it expects a further 900,000-barrel reduction in non-Opec output by the end of this year. This Saudi-driven price war has seen global investment in oil exploration and field development cut by $300bn, some 41pc, since 2014. The “active rig count”–, the number of wells being pumped worldwide, is down 37pc. Before these trends are slowed, let alone reversed, oil will need to spend at least six months, and probably a year, firmly above $60 a barrel, if investors are to be convinced profits can be made, so persuading them to put serious money back into future crude production. Unless global markets crash, I say that year of $60-plus oil will be 2017.

Full article at http://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2016/08/27/why-im-sticking-with-my-forecast-of-oil-rising-to-60-a-barrel/

● Liam Halligan (@LiamHalligan) – Economist/Writer/Broadcaster, Telegraph Columnist, BNE Editor-at-Large, Proud member of http://www.thehooligans.co.uk Locations: London, Saffron Walden, Moscow.

—

Posted by Elizabeth Kerr

Jane Kelsey —The FIRE Economy: New Zealand’s Reckoning #book

The name of Kelsey’s book refers to an acronym for economies primarily based around “finance, insurance and real estate”.

### ODT Online Thu, 10 Sep 2015
Foretelling end of neoliberalism
By Carla Green
Legal scholar Jane Kelsey has described the “morbid symptoms” of neoliberalism’s impending downfall. The University of Auckland law professor was speaking during the presentation of her new book, The Fire Economy, in Dunedin this week.
Read more

Image via Idealog.co.nz

—

Bridget Williams Books (promotion + sales)

The FIRE Economy: New Zealand’s Reckoning
Jane Kelsey

The FIRE economy – built on finance, insurance and real estate – is now the world’s principal source of wealth creation. Its rise has transformed our political, economic and social landscapes, supported by a neoliberal regime that celebrates markets, profit and risk. From rising inequality and ballooning household debt to a global financial crisis and fiscal austerity, the neoliberal ‘orthodoxy’ has brought instability and empowered the few. Yet it remains remarkably resilient, even resurgent, in New Zealand and abroad.
In 1995 Jane Kelsey set out a groundbreaking account of the neoliberal revolution in The New Zealand Experiment. Now she marshals an exceptional range of evidence to show how this transfer of wealth and power has been systematically embedded over three decades.
Today organisations and commentators once at the vanguard of neoliberal reform, including the IMF and Financial Times journalist Martin Wolf, are warning the current model is unsustainable. A post-neoliberal era beckons. In The FIRE Economy Kelsey identifies the risks posed by FIRE and the barriers embedded neoliberalism presents to a progressive, post-neoliberal transformation – and urges us to act. This is a book New Zealand cannot afford to ignore.
BWB Link + Book Preview

—

█ Videos at YouTube (published by Scoop):

Jane Kelsey “The Fire Economy” Book Talk To The Fabians 5 August 2015 (pt 1)
Jane Kelsey “The Fire Economy” Book Talk To The Fabians 5 August 2015 (pt 2)
Jane Kelsey “The Fire Economy” Book Talk To The Fabians 5 August 2015 (pt 3)

—

[via Scoop.co.nz]

Fri, 17 Jul 2015, 4:30 pm
The FIRE Economy: New Zealand’s Reckoning – By Jane Kelsey
Opinion: Professor Jane Kelsey
Introduction – An Extract

The global economy imploded in 2008 and confirmed a stark reality. Entire nations and billions of people are captives of an unstable and amoral economic system powered by finance, insurance and real estate – FIRE. New Zealand included.
‘The FIRE economy’ is a metaphor for the fundamental shift in global capitalism since the 1970s. Finance has replaced industry as the driver of wealth creation in affluent countries – a transformation known as financialisation. Neoliberal ideology, rules and institutions acted first as the midwife and then as the guardian of this new economic order.
The Global Financial Crisis (GFC) showed the world’s richest countries, notably the US and the nations of Europe, that the globally integrated economy they had created, and from which they have prospered, could also bring them to their knees. Faith in the neoliberal ‘orthodoxy’ that shaped and sustained them seemed shattered. The fallout was fast and furious, and quickly spread to many other parts of the world.
A cursory look might suggest that little has really changed. Neoliberalism remains deeply embedded in most countries. The finance industry is resurgent and those who profit from it are unrepentant. Conservative parties with pro-market and pro-austerity mandates have been elected to govern some of the countries hardest hit.
Appearances are, however, deceptive. Confidence in the FIRE economy has faltered since the GFC and the hegemony of the neoliberal model is in decline. Core tenets of neoliberal ideology are being repudiated, even in institutions like the International Monetary Fund (IMF). Social inequality and poverty in and between countries are now recognised as symptoms of a sick system. Popular unrest in Europe has intensified, and new political parties from neo-Nazi fascists to the socialist left have gained ground. There are credible predictions of further crises.
The United Nations Conference for Trade and Development (UNCTAD) warned in its flagship Trade and Development report for 2014, six years after the GFC erupted, that the ‘world economy has not yet escaped the growth doldrums in which it has been marooned for the past four years, and there is a growing danger that this state of affairs is becoming accepted as the “new normal”’. That ‘new normal’ is not sustainable.
The world is entering a period of transformation equivalent to the epochal shift to Keynesian interventionism from the 1930s and the neoliberal revolution from the late 1970s. We are in the interregnum. The old orthodoxy is unstable and fragile; a new one has yet to be born. It remains to be seen how this plays out, how much resistance it will encounter, and whether alternative approaches can really break through the barriers designed to protect neoliberalism and the FIRE economy from just such a transformation.

Kiwi complacency
While the GFC has plunged rich countries like the US and England and later Spain and Greece into turmoil, New Zealand seems to be basking in the belief that it has survived the crisis pretty much unscathed. The standard Kiwi narrative treats it as a northern hemisphere affair, triggered by greedy American bankers and profligate European governments. The story goes something like this.
In today’s globalised world there was bound to be some collateral damage from other countries’ post-crisis recessions, but our financial system was shown to be basically sound (mainly because the Australian banks that own ours are sound). Governments on both sides of the Tasman responded promptly and effectively. Temporary interventions provided fiscal stimulus and bank guarantees steadied the ship, staving off a more serious recession. Stability was restored. Each country then resumed business as usual, regardless of their governments’ political hue. Helped by exports to China, future prospects looked positive, even rosy. Exuberant commentators went so far as to hail New Zealand as the ‘rock star’ economy of 2014. The strong centre-right vote at the 2014 election suggested confidence in the status quo or, at least, that the belief in TINA – there is no alternative – still prevails.
Before the 2008 election, as the GFC began to erupt, business journalist Bob Edlin observed how the country’s leaders seemed ‘curiously phlegmatic about global financial upheaval and its economic implications’. Their offerings ‘amounted to little more than tweaks of programmes that have brought us to where we are – a standstill’. No one was ‘peddling a cyclone-shelter or rebuilding programme’. Nothing has changed since then.

Couldn’t happen here?
This complacency is deeply disturbing. Neoliberalism has not served most New Zealanders well. Nor, in other than a hedonistic sense, has financialisation. Structural poverty and deep inequalities of wealth and income have transformed the social landscape. We have a shallow economy that depends on FIRE, farming, post-earthquake reconstruction and immigration. Periods of sustained economic growth in the 2000s have been fuelled by cheap credit. As a consequence, households, farmers and the country sit on a growing mountain of debt. Trading in property has become the main source of easy wealth, creating repeated incipient property bubbles. We have most of the preconditions that have been identified as triggers for a crisis.
A former Reserve Bank of Australia governor, Ian Macfarlane, is under no illusion there will be further crises. In 2008 he pointed to at least eight financial crises that impacted on Australia – and hence New Zealand – in the three decades before the GFC. Five were banking crises, and three involved excessive and risky lending in the property sector. Some affected New Zealand much more severely than the GFC. However, it was the depth and contagion of the latest crisis that Macfarlane says made it the most significant internationally and invalidated the model of the deregulated financial system.
New Zealand is much more at risk than Australia because successive Labour and National governments have located this country at the pure end of the neoliberal spectrum. For years it was known as the Wild West of financial markets. Adjustments during the 2000s were still premised on light-handed risk-tolerant regulation. Even since the GFC, governments and their advisers have continued to position New Zealand as an outlier, ignoring doubts in other countries and international institutions over the wisdom of letting financial markets rule.
Without some fundamental changes, New Zealand risks sleepwalking into a social, economic and political catastrophe. No one knows how or when that might happen. The tipping point could be another massive offshore crisis. Or it could be self-generated, as it was in Iceland and Ireland, if we fail to heed the warning signs. There is much to learn from Iceland’s successful post-crisis strategy of intervention, redistribution and capital controls, and from the tragedy of austerity economics in Greece, Spain and Ireland.

Time to act
Waiting for Armageddon is hardly a progressive strategy. It makes much more sense for New Zealanders to confront the country’s challenges now and begin to shape a socially progressive alternative than to battle over models in the midst of a crisis. While it is true New Zealand’s fate will inevitably be caught up in the unfolding of international events, Kiwis can influence how those global dynamics shape our future.
Read more

—

Posted by Elizabeth Kerr

World economy explained with two cows

[Almost no-one dares mention the name of the former CFO in the definition of Venture Capitalism for reasons that the bovine defendant “has a fiduciary duty to his fellow members of council” and the council has been required all the while to collect higher taxes.]

—

Received.
Monday, 22 July 2013 9:46 p.m.

SOCIALISM
You have 2 cows.
You give one to your neighbour.

COMMUNISM
You have 2 cows.
The State takes both and gives you some milk.

FASCISM
You have 2 cows.
The State takes both and sells you some milk.

BUREAUCRATISM
You have 2 cows.
The State takes both, shoots one, milks the other and then throws the milk away.

TRADITIONAL CAPITALISM
You have two cows.
You sell one and buy a bull.
Your herd multiplies, and the economy grows.
You sell them and retire on the income.

VENTURE CAPITALISM
You have two cows.
You sell three of them to your publicly listed company, using letters of credit opened by your brother-in-law at the bank, then execute a debt/equity swap with an associated general offer so that you get all four cows back, with a tax exemption for five cows.
The milk rights of the six cows are transferred via an intermediary to a Cayman Island Company secretly owned by the majority shareholder who sells the rights to all seven cows back to your listed company.
The annual report says the company owns eight cows, with an option on one more.

AN AMERICAN CORPORATION
You have two cows.
You sell one, and force the other to produce the milk of four cows.
Later, you hire a consultant to analyse why the cow has died.

A FRENCH CORPORATION
You have two cows.
You go on strike, organize a riot, and block the roads, because you want three cows.

AN ITALIAN CORPORATION
You have two cows, but you do not know where they are.
You decide to have lunch.

A SWISS CORPORATION
You have 5,000 cows. None of them belong to you.
You charge the owners for storing them.

A CHINESE CORPORATION
You have two cows.
You have 300 people milking them.
You claim that you have full employment and high bovine productivity.
You arrest the newsman who reported the real situation.

AN INDIAN CORPORATION
You have two cows.
You worship them.

A BRITISH CORPORATION
You have two cows.
Both are mad.

AN IRAQI CORPORATION
Everyone thinks you have lots of cows.
You tell them that you have none.
Nobody believes you, so they bomb the crap out of you and invade your country.
You still have no cows but at least you are now a Democracy.

AN AUSTRALIAN CORPORATION
You have two cows.
Business seems pretty good.
You close the office and go for a few beers to celebrate.

A NEW ZEALAND CORPORATION
You have two cows.
The one on the left looks very attractive.

A GREEK CORPORATION
You have two cows borrowed from French and German banks.
You eat both of them.
The banks call to collect their milk, but you cannot deliver so you call the IMF.
The IMF loans you two cows.
You eat both of them.
The banks and the IMF call to collect their cows/milk.
You are out getting a haircut.

AN IRISH CORPORATION
You have two cows
One of them’s a horse!

[ends]

—

Posted by Elizabeth Kerr

Storm Cunningham: Champion of the Restoration Economy

Updated post
Sun, 14 Feb 2016 at 3:32 a.m.

—

“Restorationists… a huge, dynamic professional community.”

“Restorative development: The process of adding new value to natural or built assets, ideally in a manner that detracts neither from their other preexisting values, nor from the value of other assets.”

The following is an advertisement of sorts, hoop-la with compelling messages…

Source: www.revitaliz.com

****

Storm Cunningham is the author of The Restoration Economy (Berrett-Koehler, 2002) and reWealth (McGraw-Hill Professional, 2008).

The Restoration Economy is the first book on regenerative growth: the first to document the “hidden”, multi-trillion-dollar economic sector that is revitalising our communities, our nations, and our natural resources. Regenerative growth is also called “restorative development”: in it lies the future of our civilisation, and our planet.

Storm Cunningham is CEO of Resolution Fund, LLC. This Washington, DC-based firm offers the Renewal Capacity Program, a series of seven 1-day workshops that help communities worldwide efficiently ignite rapid, resilient renewal of their economy, their natural resources, and their quality of life. Resolution Fund trains both the public and the private sectors to partner more effectively on regeneration, and then matches these communities and redevelopers on the right projects at the right time.

Storm is also founder of Revitalization Institute, the non-profit international academic alliance for community renewal and natural resource restoration, and is Distinguished Visiting Professor at Seneca College, Canada’s largest educational institution.

****

The Restoration Economy helped launch the consolidation of what might be the most important new industry on earth: The fragmented $1.5 – $2 trillion-dollar/year restorative development industry, whose practitioners are now uniting through the work of the Revitalization Institute. Hundreds of thousands of business, government, academic, and non-profit leaders have been restoring the world’s communities and natural resources, but under a myriad of names, such as “redevelopers”, “remediators”, or “restorers” of ecosystems, heritage, watersheds, fisheries, disasters, wars, infrastructure, etc. It has inspired exciting new economic revitalisation strategies, such as the leading-edge Oilforest Plan for tropical countries looking to wean themselves from over-dependence on economically and environmentally unsustainable monoculture crops (such as bananas).

Until this groundbreaking book came along, these restorative investors, architects, engineers, planners, biologists, preservationists, community leaders, foresters, and entrepreneurs often didn’t perceive that they were all revitalisation professionals. We now understand that we can’t revitalise a city or region in bits and pieces (such as individual brownfields projects or historic buildings): True, self-sustaining revitalisation comes from applying the 3 Renewal Rules.

The Restoration Economy describes a huge, fast-growing new growth frontier for entrepreneurs, investors, and organisational leaders, not to mention graduates looking for the most personally fulfilling and financially rewarding career path.

Restorative development comprises eight industries that are restoring our natural and our manmade environments worldwide. The book’s Table of Contents reveals these eight industries; you can also read the entire Preface and Introduction online at Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/The-Restoration-Economy-Storm-Cunningham/dp/1576751910 [go to ‘Look inside’].

Source: www.restorationeconomy.com

****

“Storm Cunningham and William McDonough were born the same year, 1951. Both published landmark environmental books in the same year, 2002. And both are optimistic about the world’s future in spite of the spectre of climate change and resource depletion. Now [Cunningham’s] got another book… it’s called reWealth, a volume of insights, examples and tools needed “to create rapid, resilient, regional renewal in cities and natural areas anywhere on the planet.”
– Korky Koroluk, “Cradle to Cradle” and “The Restoration Economy” offer food for thought, in Daily Commercial News & Construction Record, March 28, 2008
[read article]

www.rewealth.com

—

Post by Elizabeth Kerr

Global construction industry: New Zealand chances to rebuild its wool industry

THANK GOD THE LIGHT IS SEEN. For 15 years or more our sheep’s wool has foundered on the back of zero marketing and collapsing management of the industry sector. Global customers with the smarts to use sustainable products in their building design and fitouts ARE WHO WE WANT. The fact that New Zealand and ‘allied’ international wool producers failed to reverse the drafting of building specification standards almost universally favouring the use of synthetics is UNFATHOMABLE, but it happened. Have to change the (global) rules, grow our sheep numbers again, and start rigorously processing and trading natural wool products!

### ODT Online Mon, 12 Apr 2010
Exposing architects to virtues of wool
By Neal Wallace
Thirteen of the world’s leading architects will be exposed to the virtues of wool during a week-long visit to the South Island. The architects will be shown the merits of wool, visit farms, absorb South Island scenery and then follow the fibre from the sheep’s back to finished products before being tasked with designing a hotel which makes maximum use of wool in every aspect of the building.

The project was part of the International Wool Textile Organisation’s international wool promotion programme and was mostly funded by the National Council of New Zealand Wool Interests (NCNZWI).

Read more

Post by Elizabeth Kerr