Australian Wool Innovation is set to undertake a major strategic research direction change to address rapidly rising wool harvesting costs. Only about 10 per cent of AWI’s annual harvesting investment portfolio is currently spent on alternatives to manual shearing and in-shed sheep handling. Shearing costs are rising faster than efficiency gains from in-shed shearer training.

AWI also wants to use savings achieved in a recent round of staff redundancies to explore alternatives to the manual shearing of sheep. Additional research in wool harvesting could involve combining robotic, chemical and previous platforms or chain shearing technology to provide cost-saving in-shed alternatives for growers and shearers.

AWI will look at some of the industry’s bigger problems, such as the issue of shearing heavier sheep efficiently and safely. Shearing costs continue to rise while increasing numbers of growers are shearing sheep twice a year or every eight months to assist cash flow, minimise flystrike and cut crutching costs.

More than 80 potential harvesting technologies have been assessed by AWI, identifying promising areas for development including hand piece technology, parallel, modular, upright shearing platforms and alternative shearing technologies.

The aim is to find a replacement for manual shearing like robotics, laser and deal with the cost of shearing.