Science the key, says wool chief

By LIAM DANN primary industries editor

Out of the ashes of the old Wool Board will rise a dynamic new science and biotech company focused on keeping New Zealand sheep farmers ahead of the rest of the world.

Called Wool Equities, it could be listed on the stock exchange in just over two years.

Its future is in the hands of sheep farmers, who, unlike their dairy colleagues, have a choice about whether to become shareholders.

When the Wool Board's assets are redistributed around October, they could also choose to take the money and run.

Wool Equities chairman Richard Bentley is the man who aims to convince farmers that investing in science is the key to their future.

"I've got to go out and sell this concept," he said. "We run the risk that they will all take the money. I feel some responsibility to spell out an achievable framework."

Because sheep farming was more fragmented than the dairy sector there had not been an entity like Wool Equities to date, he said.

"Sometimes the meat companies have done the work, sometimes the Meat Board, sometimes the Wool Board."

Bentley has never been a farmer but is passionate about the possibilities for new technology to bring value to the sector.

"New Zealand has the most sophisticated sheep sector in the world, easily," he said. "The kind of work being done here and techniques that are used and the quality of the animals is unprecedented.

"We can't go to any other country for advice on this - we've got to do the science ourselves."

Wool Equities will be focused on all aspects of sheep farming.

"You can't talk about the animal as separate for meat and wool," he said. "I see two broad objectives for Wool Equities. One is to improve the on-farm productivity and the second is to improve the value of the sheep at the farm gate by using new technologies."

Bentley has a strong background in business and new technology.

He is a director of Natural Gas Corporation, where he was chief executive from 1989 to 2000. He also chairs the Institute for Crop and Food Research, Hawkes Bay genetics company Rissington Breedline and Wellington IT company MediaLab South Pacific.

The motto of Wool Equities would be "strategy before research".

"We don't want to do research that doesn't have a probability of a commercial outcome."

Despite that, Bentley's vision of a biotech-driven future is expansive.

"Gene mapping will allow the evolution of new sheep genetics with improvements in the health, meat quality and productivity of sheep," he said. "Out-of-season lambing and single-sex lambing will become routine."

He believes a combination of DNA banking and wireless broadband communication technology will allow sheep to be traced from the paddock to the table.

"It's about consumer comfort," he said "You've got a unique record of where a sheep's been. People are going to want it and I reckon it's what we ought to tell people."

Bentley isn't waiting to get started. "I've already had discussions with Telecom," he said.

Ultimately Wool Equities will not limit its research to farmer shareholders. It will market itself to all-comers.

"We won't restrict who research and technology will be provided to because they want to be as successful as possible," he said.

"Hopefully they [farmers] will have a sufficient belief in their own industry that the shares will become more valuable and they may even get dividends along the way."