Australian Wool Innovation’s marketing subsidiary The Woolmark Company has set an ambitious target to absorb three per cent of Vietnam’s $27 billion dollar textile export market within four years. Biting off a larger slice of the textile market will be achieved through education. A dozen traditionally acrylic spinners are being taught how to manufacture wool and wool blended yarns. Several of the 12 companies trained in the dyeing, knitting and finishing processes have already started with commercial orders.

The next goal is to encourage early stage processing of top making and scouring in Vietnam’s garment-focused industry. This would act as an alternative to Australia’s heavy reliance on China as the major buyer of greasy wool. The 2014-15 financial year saw Vietnamese textile market acquire 8,00,000 kg of Australian wool - predominantly via early stage processing mills in China.

In 2014, in an effort to increase competition with China for Australian wool, AWI reignited the market with Russia and had another bid at generating a new market in Vietnam. Last year, a Vietnamese company experimented using wool/acrylic blends in sweaters. Last week it began the commercial processing of wool. Although Australia will never be the powerhouse China is, it expects to see significant growth in Australian wool clip in Vietnam.

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