Wool research funding under threat

PALMERSTON NORTH - Uncertainty over funding is threatening operations at the Wool Research Organisation (Wronz), warns its chairman, Lochie MacGillivray.

The organisation may be forced to pull out of research and development on wool unless funding commitments are made in the next few months, he says.

Describing the industry's McKinsey report on the future of the industry as technically stagnant in terms of post-harvest research and development, Mr MacGillivray said the industry was in danger of losing its best and brightest scientists unless some decisions were made.

Farmers had until the Meat Board annual meeting in about six months to decide on post-harvest funding and give the organisation some certainty about its future, he said.

"Research and development can't be a stop-start operation. People will leave if they don't have stability in jobs - and they won't come back. And all the leverage programme we have achieved with industry and Government will be destroyed."

He said funding proposals in the McKinsey report for post-production research were unsatisfactory.

The report proposed that a $10 million back-up fund should be available for research and development in case existing arrangements failed.

If Wronz had to use some of the $10 million fund from reserves, a farmer vote in 2003 would determine the level at which Wronz should be financed.

But Wronz could not wait until 2003 for funding certainty, Mr MacGillivray said.

Wronz would be loath to pull out of wool research, but to safeguard the incorporated society and its members, it might have to move into other forms of research and development.

- NZPA