AUSTRALIA'S wool industry may never recoup the value of sales lost due to the combined impacts of the coronavirus and Talman selling system shutdown of wool auctions last month.
That is the view of Australian Wool Innovation (AWI) chief executive officer Stuart McCullough, expressed during a visit to last week's Make Smoking History Wagin Woolorama.
"The ramifications of that (coronavirus and cancelled sales), not only to woolgrowers but to AWI as their research, development and marketing company, is a worry," Mr McCullough said.
"As everyone knows, the coronavirus started in China which is our biggest consumption market for apparel and also our biggest manufacturing market in terms of processing."
"We (AWI) don't see a way the wool industry wins out of this.
"If the consumer is isolating themselves, quarantining themselves and not buying, then that impacts not only our product, but many others.
"If the consumer can't buy a sweater or a wool suit, that affects us.
"If a processor wants to open a letter of credit to buy a container of wool, but can't get to the bank or the bank has a lag period, then that affects us too from a trade point of view.
"Then, if they do happen to get the order, we had the Talman system shutdown and they weren't able to buy wool.
"Ultimately, if they've got the line of credit, bought the container of wool, then there's the backlog at the ports and in the factories as well.
"It's a kind of full circle of trouble for the wool industry.
"What worries me is the lost sales from January and February.
"If people were coming out of quarantine into winter conditions they would be buying wool, but they are now into warmer months and we may never recoup those lost sales."
Mr McCullough said the Wool Selling System Review of 2015-16 had been "explicit" about the live auction selling system being vulnerable to a cyber attack.
AWI's WoolQ platform had been developed as a response to that possibility, he said.
"My concerns about the Talman system are that security has been made robust enough to withstand a future attack," Mr McCullough said.
"We hope that they have the adequate security in there now to prevent an attack.
"It's one thing to get wool sold, it's another to get it consolidated and containerised and to a port.
"Many woolgrowers, particularly in New South Wales, are coming out of the drought and are under real fiscal pressure.
"They deserve to be able to sell their wool when they see fit without delay."
Mr McCullough said the reduction of the wool levy to 1.5 per cent of wool sale value from the start of the current financial year, coupled with the reduction in size and value of the national wool clip, had resulted in AWI being "downsized".
"For us it's meant revenue reduction, project reduction and human resource reduction," he said.
"We've taken the company from 200 people to about 170 now and we will be 150 by the end of this year.
"Fortunately, the company was prudent enough over the past nine years to build adequate reserves that we can draw upon, so we don't face a fiscal cliff."