Oct 23, 2026 · 8 min · 7 segments
After devastating cyclone damage, WoolWorks' Napier plant is humming again, transforming fleece from hill country shearing sheds into the clean, dry, pressed, product ready for carpet makers and other…
Penny MilesCountry Life HostHost
Roston says the wool comes from farms around the North Island Hill Country, and right now the factory's gearing up for its big summer shearing peak.
It's around about 165,000 kilos of wool that we process every day here.
So every day we're scouring wool that's come off 50,000 sheep.
So that's a lot of farms.
So it's big numbers.
Later on he'll show me the new electronic monitoring equipment on the production line.
He'll point to the damaged machines pieced back together by engineers and he'll speak about rewiring the entire plant.
Right now he's pointing to a yellow mark on some posts showing the water line from the flood around two metres in the air.
So if you see the top of the yellow on those posts there, that was actually the water line and it sat here for about three months.
The upside to the flood was it's got a lovely new factory effectively, the one in New York, The buildings structurally were all pretty good, but we did have to do a lot of re-cleaning.
The biggest job was actually rewiring the whole facility at the time, simply because water had ingressed into all sorts of areas of where the wiring was.
Roston says about 85% of the wool goes to China, India, the United States and Europe, where it's manufactured into rugs, bedding, carpets and building materials.
We also service Terra Lana who make well insulation materials and a number of other burgeoning innovators here in New Zealand which is really good to see who are getting into their natural fibre sustainable products space.
And then we service a whole range of manufacturers around the world.
Primarily those that work in the interior textile space for homes and commercial buildings.
So people who are making ultimately flooring products, carpet, tiles, insulation material, acoustic panels and furnishings for office equipment and curtains and so on.
It's around about 85% exported, 15% local.
Roston says the wool comes from farms around the North Island Hill Country, and right now the factory's gearing up for its big summer shearing peak.
It's around about 165,000 kilos of wool that we process every day here.
So every day we're scouring wool that's come off 50,000 sheep.
So that's a lot of farms.
So it's big numbers.
Later on he'll show me the new electronic monitoring equipment on the production line.
He'll point to the damaged machines pieced back together by engineers and he'll speak about rewiring the entire plant.
Right now he's pointing to a yellow mark on some posts showing the water line from the flood around two metres in the air.
So if you see the top of the yellow on those posts there, that was actually the water line and it sat here for about three months.
The upside to the flood was it's got a lovely new factory effectively, the one in New York, The buildings structurally were all pretty good, but we did have to do a lot of re-cleaning.
The biggest job was actually rewiring the whole facility at the time, simply because water had ingressed into all sorts of areas of where the wiring was.
Roston says about 85% of the wool goes to China, India, the United States and Europe, where it's manufactured into rugs, bedding, carpets and building materials.
We also service Terra Lana who make well insulation materials and a number of other burgeoning innovators here in New Zealand which is really good to see who are getting into their natural fibre sustainable products space.
And then we service a whole range of manufacturers around the world.
Primarily those that work in the interior textile space for homes and commercial buildings.
So people who are making ultimately flooring products, carpet, tiles, insulation material, acoustic panels and furnishings for office equipment and curtains and so on.
It's around about 85% exported, 15% local.
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