It’s your wool. It’s your industry. Joining the only farmer owned wool co-operative in New Zealand is your opportunity to invest in the future of both, while receiving unique benefits.
As a wool grower, you can do a job and do it well without being a member of Primary Wool Co-Operative, so why join?
If you are not a member and you sell your wool through another merchant, you get paid for your wool and contribute to the profits of your wool merchant. End of story.
But if you are a Primary Wool Co-Operative member you and your industry both benefit.
How? If you sell your wool through a Wools of New Zealand LP auction you:
- Get paid for your wool (nothing different there).
- Earn a rebate which returns some of your consolidated charges back to you.*
- Contribute to the profits of Wools of New Zealand LP.
- Know that 50% of those profits are coming back to your Primary Wool Co-Operative.
- Watch those profits be returned to you and other members as dividends or discounts, or to the industry in financial support of various industry-good activities.*
See how this works
How the Co-Operative model works
Need a refresher? It’s very simple.
- Most importantly, the Co-Operative is 100% owned by you, the growers.
- It operates a 50:50 joint venture, Wools of New Zealand LP (WNZ LP), with Wools of New Zealand, a farmer owned agribusiness based in Christchurch, as the other partner. This joint venture is a broking business (testing, warehousing, preparing wool for sale) and also a vehicle for taking finished product to market including wool carpet.
- As a 50% owner, half the profits of WNZ LP come back to Primary Wool Co-Operative.
- Primary Wool Co-Operative is then able to use these profits in various ways, whether to pay a return to its grower-shareholders in the form of dividends and/or rebates*, or to the industry in terms of industry-good spending (see below).
Benefits to members
In recent years returns have come in the form of discounted wool packs, rebates and dividends*. In the three years to 30 June 2018, the average cumulative return on investment across all shareholders was an incredibly impressive 39%.
Industry-good spending
With the objective of lifting demand for wool, we support the industry via scholarships, financial resources and collaboration. If you have a project you think the Co-Operative would be interested in, please contact us.
*Returns are not guaranteed and can vary from year to year but are a feature of the co-operative model.