Australian Wool Innovation (AWI) is familiarizing Vietnamese manufacturers to its wool products as many of the Vietnamese companies had not used wool until two year ago. A couple of knitters thought they were using wool but it turned out to be acrylic. This move will help the Australian wool industry reduce its reliance on China as at present, 75 per cent of the Australian wool is exported to China.

AWI's strategy to increase Vietnamese textile and apparel industry's interest in the fibre of which it ran training courses to explain wool’s properties, benefits and features for manufacturing and producing garments.

Next step was introducing the manufacturers to suppliers of Australian wool yarns and then encourage companies to set up their own spinning facilities and ultimately their own scouring and top making plants in Vietnam.

Vietnamese producers are currently importing yarn from China, India, Italy and Germany . By starting domestic yarn processing it will help save import costs and time for small orders.

The aim objective is to have them buy wool out of the auction room, of which they had to start by introducing wool to the knitters as no capital investment was required as they use the same knitting machine whether it be for wool, cotton or acrylic.

AWI, is now in discussion with Vietnamese and six foreign companies to invest in setting up a wool weaving plant in Vietnam.

AWI's involvement in Vietnam will lead to more local processing. As importing fabric and yarn from other countries can lead to time delays and high prices for small orders so being able to buy more in Vietnam in the future would be good.

The Woolmark standards and requirement in terms of both wear and laundering performance has also been explained.

Now the Vietnamese manufacturers are confident in producing quality wool garments, AWI will introduce them to global retail and brand buy. The first delegation of 10 companies from Japan will travel to Vietnam next month to meet the Vietnamese partners.

Following the Japanese buyers’ visit, will be a group of Korean retailers and in the future AWI plans to follow this with buyers from Europe and the United States too.