Add to this pizza, $5 notes, towels, stockfeed bags, spray cans, and even a live bullet, Canterbury Wool Scourers production co-ordinator Struan Hulme said.
The steel bars, usually off the wool press, have the potential to cause up to $20,000 of damage to scouring equipment, he told wool classers at a field day in Christchurch on Tuesday.
The spray cans can be activated several times through the scour process, discolouring a lot of wool. Wool market crayons were also a problem.
Metal detectors keep some of the worst stuff out, but NZ still had a significant issue with non-wool contamination in terms of money and production costs.
“We’ve got a problem,” he said.
“We’ve got systems in place but we’re still getting shearing shed rubbish.”
Over the last year, there have been an average eight to nine contamination finds a week in wool sent to the scouring plants.
Canterbury Wool Scourers in Timaru is now one of only two plants in NZ since the merger of the Cavalier Wool and NZ Wool Services International scour businesses. Its sister plant is the Hawke’s Bay Wool Scourers’ facility in Napier.
The scours have staff training days to help find objects when they’re sorting wool and a lot of money has been spent on the in-line detection units able to find even small objects, Hulme said.
However, the problem had to be addressed in the shearing shed, he said.
Shed workers should ensure that the area round the board and press were kept tidy, and be careful where they tossed clothing and towels after using them.
Wool Classers Association executive officer Bruce Abbott said farmers should make sure they weren’t leaving items lying on the floors and shelves.
Hulme said NZ was doing well to be scouring up to 75% of the wool produced here.
Abbott told the classers that when he was working at the Timaru scour years ago, a full pay packet had been found in Australian wool being scoured there. “We were able to send it back to them.”
These days, since incorporating the volumes of the Kaputone plant near Christchurch, the Timaru scour gets 2000 bales of wool delivered a day “on a big day”, Hulme said, and between 800 and 1000 on a normal day. “One million kilograms a week is big for us, and 700,000kg reasonably big.”
As well as the occasional non-wool contaminant, Hulme said afterwards that the overall wool condition is showing signs of the low cross-bred price.
“The wool tends to follow the market, and we see some apathy in the presentation when prices are poor.
“We say to farmers they should present the wool in its best light. It’s your brand and your image, and you need to protect that.”
