Collectively, the shareholders of WONZ and Primary Wool Co-operative, along with other farmers supplying PWC's joint venture Carrfields Primary Wool, produced more than a third of New Zealand's strong wool clip.
Primary Wool Co-operative was formed in 1974 by a group of Hawke's Bay farmers and membership had grown to more than 1400 throughout New Zealand.
Wools of New Zealand had 730 grower shareholders representing about 14.5 million kg of annual strong wool production.
"Combining with PWC ... will mean we can achieve scale, reinvent the supply chain and improve efficiencies, enabled by the increased volume, brands and exporting focus WONZ brings to the table," Parsons said.
PWC chairman Hamish de Lautour said the stronger entity must focus on marketing and extracting value from products made of wool and not just trading wool as a commodity, if wool was to capitalise on its "rightful place as the sustainable fibre of choice for consumers".
Parsons said WONZ and PWC envisaged a lean, simple commercial structure that delivered the opportunity for other grower groups and new grower shareholders to join.
While combining operations would take time due to the nature of the company structures, there was a strong commitment from both that it was "a prize worth pursuing", he said.
Meanwhile, PGG Wrightson Wool's South Island team said last week's wool sale in Christchurch was "remarkable for all the wrong reasons" after experiencing the most dramatic price fall seen in more than a generation for mid micron wools, which were 22 per cent to 30 per cent cheaper.
Interestingly, the finer merino and crossbred wools, while cheaper compared with the previous sale, saw more action competition from the bench and resulted in a higher clearing rate. Crossbred fleece (31 to 40 micron) was 5 per cent cheaper.
The effects of Covid-19 continued to severely affect discretionary consumer spending in traditional markets, it said.
