Being class conscious

Katanning farmer Mark Harris looks over his clip with wool classer Kevin Holland.

Inadequate numbers of shed staff and training, unmulesed and exotic sheep breeds and pressure are impacting on the number of registered wool classers.

Last week, the Australian Wool Exchange (AWEX) reported wool classer registrations in WA had dropped by 25 per cent to 2500 and were the lowest in the nation.

Katanning wool classer Kevin Holland believes increased pressure on wool classers is driving them out of the industry.

The former shearer with 32 years' experience has been classing clips for two years with Spartan Shearing.

He said that while wool classers go to school and shearers have instructors, when new shed staff are employed, it's often up to wool classers to teach them the ropes.

"At the same time, wool classers need to be doing their job and when there are five shearers doing 200 sheep a run, there is a lot of pressure," he said."Plus farmers need a certain amount of wool and it falls back on the wool classer but what can you do," he said.

Unmulesed sheep full of dags and exotic breeds are also making it hard for classers.

Spartan Shearing contractor Johnny King believes it's going to get harder to find professional classers who understand the shed to mill process.

He said the industry was getting left with people with little experience and practical industry knowledge that was learnt on the job.

Farmer Mark Harris, also of Katanning, said wool classers were an important part of the industry but questioned the AWEX figures.

He said there had been no talk of how many new registrations had been received, how many of the renewals were owner-classers and how much was down to natural attrition.

Since AWEX's report was released, it said 130 re-registrations had been received from owner-classers.

AWEX chef executive Mark Grave said it was down 25 per cent for professional classers and 20 per cent down on owner-classers.

He said low registrations were due in part to the busy season over harvest, Christmas and New Year. He also said that since the last registration in 2006, the wool industry had changed and more producers had moved out of wool and into meat.

Each year Mr Grave said AWEX received 300 new wool classer registrations, including more females, more husbands and wives classing for the family farm and more older classers registering.

Wool not classed by a registered wool classer is usually discounted between 50 cents clean up to $1.50.

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