The Southern Series Backing Wool

The battle to get wool carpets into public buildings takes another step with the launch this year of The Southern Series (TSS) elite shearing competition circuit.

The 2023 series will start in Waimate in October, with back-to back-events on the 6th and 7th. It finishes with the NZ Corriedale Championships at the NZ Agricultural Show in Christchurch on November 17th.

After being successfully trialled at last year’s NZ Corriedale Championships, this year’s three-show TSS circuit is the next stage in the roll-out of a global shearing competition circuit, taking in shows in Australia, the UK, Europe, Canada and the United States, with the annual final in Christchurch.

TSS aims to build a global audience for competition shearing and raise the profile of wool, particularly strongwool, which comprises 85% of the New Zealand clip. Strongwools are mostly used in the carpet and furnishings sector where they compete against oil-based synthetic carpets.

TSS supports calls for wool carpets to be used in public buildings and schools in New Zealand because they are of a natural fibre with a much lower carbon footprint, are fully bio-degradable and perform and last as well as or better than synthetics.

Synthetic fibres, by contrast, made from the world’s biggest global pollutant, oil, exude a range of chemical toxins both while in use, and also in landfills for years, posing the threat of their getting into the food chain.

Last year's Corriedales Championship, won by Jack Fagan of Te Kuiti, was just the start for TSS, event manager Hugh de Lacy (snr) says.

“It was a successful proof of concept. Now we’re going one step further and expanding the series. We’re very much thinking long term. We do have a long-term vision and that is to support all shearing events here in New Zealand and around the world and this is another step in that direction,” de Lacy says.

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