“The King once said that if the smartest scientist with the most well-funded lab was to come up with a miracle fibre, it still wouldn’t be as good as wool for all that it gives us,” says Matthew Rowe.
Rowe is the chairman of the Campaign for Wool in Canada and the Canadian Wool Council (CWC), which advocates for the advancement of the country’s wool industry across its entire value chain.
In an interview with BNN Bloomberg on Thursday, he said Canada’s wool sector is in the midst of a transformation as one of the many segments of the economy dealing with tariffs put in place by U.S. President Donald Trump’s administration.
In August, the U.S. began imposing 50 per cent tariffs on greasy – or raw – wool from Canada, as well as some finished wool products. The move essentially cut off Canadian producers from U.S. buyers, according to Rowe.
“The tariffs are on our raw wool, which really affects our ability to access processing opportunities because there’s parts of our chain that are broken,” he said.
“We’ve traditionally relied on the United States for scouring and other steps to transform [wool] into high value-added products, and the tariffs sort of cut off that option for a lot of companies now.”
For years, Canadian producers have had to ship their wool south of the border to large-scale U.S. processing facilities, which Canada doesn’t have, before taking it back to use in finished products.
Until larger domestic facilities are built, big Canadian wool producers must look to the U.K., the Czech Republic or China for processing if they hope to avoid the steep U.S. tariffs, Rowe explained.
‘Help Canadian wool go global’
The rupture in the Canada-U.S. wool trading relationship has left some Canadian producers frustrated with their American counterparts and unsure when or if there will be a return to normalcy.
But the trade tensions have given the industry a renewed focus on finding ways it can expand both domestically and overseas at a time when global wool prices are on the rise, along with demand for sustainable materials.
Earlier this month, the federal government announced an investment of nearly $160,000 over two years to the CWC, “to help Canadian wool go global.”
“Canada has high-quality products, like our Canadian wool, to offer the world, and we want to help get more of them into global markets,” Minister of Agriculture and Agri-Food Heath MacDonald said in an Oct. 7 press release.
“By supporting international promotion and trade, this investment will help our producers and processors expand their reach, overcome market barriers, and capitalize on emerging opportunities around the world.”
‘High-profile endorsement’
Another proponent of Canada’s wool industry is King Charles III, who has campaigned globally for the preservation of traditional materials and craftsmanship, Rowe explained.
“His Majesty is patron of the Campaign for Wool in Canada,” he said. “It’s really helpful to have that kind of high-profile endorsement.”
Rowe said he’s grateful for the support that’s been provided to the industry by the federal government, noting that before the CWC was founded in 2018, “wool hadn’t been funded for generations.”
He said he’d like to see the momentum turned into “significant investment” in Canada’s domestic processing capabilities, specifically the first stage known as scouring, which cleans the wool after it’s been shorn from sheep.
“The first thing you have to do is wash it,” said Rowe.
“From there you can comb it, you can align it in different ways to turn it into yarn, to turn it into felt, the yarn can then become cloth, but it all starts with that large-scale scouring, and that’s something Canada currently lacks.”
With files from The Canadian Press
