A used cartridge was also lying in the wool.
Live ammunition was a real safety issue, he said.
“The risk at our end is reasonably low but the fear is if it gets through into the scour machinery where you’ve got high speed gear at eye level it could take someone’s head off.”
If a live cartridge had gone through the scour machinery it would have exploded, Cavalier Wool Scours chief executive Tony Cunningham said.
“It is a major health and safety issue for our staff and would damage the machinery.”
The Kurow cartridges, a live 12-guage and used 20-guage, were found when the team was repacking fadge wool into a full bale in a farmer’s shed.
“We think the farmer or a farm worker would have left them there,” Urquhart said.
“They might have been shooting pigeons or starlings in the shed and then just chucked the cartridge down.”
The cartridges were found in crossbred wool but Urquhart’s business, Kurow Wools, handled a lot of high-value Merino wool as well and “nasties” were also found in that.
It was the first time he had seen live ammunition but empty .22 shells had been found before along with steel bars, clothing, bags and items used in animal vaccines.
“We’ve been talking about this for 20 or 30 years but it doesn’t seem to be getting any better.”
The find was a reminder to everyone involved in the shearing shed to be vigilant and avoid leaving any contaminants lying round.
This message was backed up Cunningham and Wool Classers Association executive officer Bruce Abbott, who said classers and handlers were often blamed for contaminants being found but the issue most often occurred because farmers did not leave their shearing sheds clean and tidy.
“They need to remove all loose items. There are a lot of things hanging or sitting on edges of beams and they end up falling off.”
There were also instances of shearing gang workers taking off a top when they got hot and throwing it aside, often to get lost in the wool.
Having hooks to hang clothing on would help.
“Bullets are a danger and something serious could happen but all contaminants are serious in terms of lost money and reputation.”
Canterbury Wool Scours supply co-ordinator Straun Hulme told a classers’ forum in May that a live bullet had been found in wool supplied to the group’s Timaru scour but this week said he didn’t know of one going through a scour process.
“I’m just pleased they found this one.”
Cavalier owned both New Zealand scour businesses, operating in Napier and Timaru.
Cunningham said metal detectors were used effectively but could not find every piece of metal in wool and scour staff were rewarded for finding contaminants.
The hardest to find were synthetic clothes and fertiliser and animal feed bags. They could go right through the scour process and end up in a carding machine and even in yarn itself, where it was detected and the batch was rejected.
That was a big cost for the industry, Cunningham said.
His Cavalier staff collected all contaminants they found, photographed them and sent the photos back the supplier to pass on the message to growers.
