This article is part of Famers Weekly’s annual Land Champions series. Read the full series here.
Kev Wilson has been woven into the Hawke’s Bay wool industry for over 60 years, during which he has worked with thousands of people and hundreds of East Coast sheep farmers.
In late November he retired from PGG Wrightson after 36 years, the past two decades in charge of the bin room and show floor, where all clips are appraised before auction.
Wilson started in wool in 1962, aged 16, as a junior classer for private broker De Pelichet Mcleod.
He was born and raised on a dairy farm at Puketapu and left school to attend Lindisfarne College to study agriculture.
All his mates were sons of sheep farmers and he worked during school holidays in woolsheds and stores, before getting an invitation to learn wool classing.
The Korean War had supercharged the wool sector and demand for the fibre was strong.
Napier was home to more than a dozen wool stores, most still standing and re-purposed: Dalgety, Hawke’s Bay Farmers, Williams & Kettle, Wrightson and National Mortgage and many others.
“At the height of each season over 1000 people worked in the local industry in Hawke’s Bay and New Zealand had 80 million sheep,” Wilson recalled.
In 1973 he moved to scouring company Louis Woods & Sons, in Awatoto.
He recalled that work was a lot more physical then, bales being manhandled around the stores and off and on transport.
“That was before forklifts and cats’ claws, so all the wool had to be shifted with hooks and barrows, and bales were stacked seven high in the old days.
“We didn’t think much about health and safety.
“If the stack opened up, it could be hazardous, and though I saw that happen a few times, I never saw anybody injured. You had to ride the bales down as they fell.”
When Louis Woods & Sons sold the plant in 1986, he decided to move on.
“I was fairly well known in the industry, so I went down the road to Wrightson Dalgety, walked in the door and Allan Jones offered me a job just like that, and away I went.”
It was during the 1980s that Wilson spent shearing season in farm woolsheds, classing at source.
“I have always had very good relationships with farmers,” he said, although the on-farm work required very early starts and long days.
Automation gradually came to wool stores; grab samplers, high-density presses, forklifts and conveyors.
Wilson said 120 people worked in the Wrightson Napier store when he started there 36 years ago. Now there are only 12, plus the office staff.
The sheep flock has shrunk and the number of wool auctions reduced, but the productivity of wool store staff members has substantially increased, and the jobs are nowhere near as taxing.
“When more people worked here, I definitely enjoyed it more, though maybe it is more efficient since modern systems and processes, and computerisation has come in.
“It’s quicker and more thorough, though you miss the human element,” he said.
Sale days are fortnightly most of the year or weekly during the high season and just as much effort goes into sample displaying and clip appraisal, notwithstanding the objective measurements available to buyers.
To be a good wool classer you have to enjoy it, Wilson reckons.
He has trained plenty of classers, including several who now hold prominent management roles in the wool sector.
PGG Wrightson’s general manager of wool, Grant Edwards, said Wilson has not only been a diligent and very skilled worker but has trained many current wool industry personnel.
Many past and present Wrightson wool staff attended the retirement function, including Edwards’s predecessor Cedric Bayly and the current North Island wool manager, Allan Jones.
Wilson said his immediate plan for retirement was to do nothing, after working 60 years, and then to travel around visiting many of the very good friends he has made during that time.
One final question: “Will strong wools recover in price and reward farmers who have sheep?”
“Yes, I would like to think so, with all the different uses now being tried, something will pay off,” he said – the eternal optimist when it comes to wool, having made it his life’s work.