THE Belfast based engineering company Mackie has set up a new division to market a revolutionary new wool cleaning system.
Mackie Wooltech will be responsible for the worldwide sales and marketing of the Wooltech cleaning system, which cleans raw wool without water using a degreasing solvent.
The system was developed over five years at a cost of more than $40 million (£25 million) by Mackie and Mr Kerry Packer's CPII group. Each Wooltech cleaning unit will be sold for more than £12 million.
The managing director of Mackie Wooltech, Mr Peter Long, declined to reveal the profit margin on each system or say how profits would be split between Mackie and the Wooltech subsidiary of CPII. But he said sales from the new division could "impact dramatically on group profits" and strengthen the overall performance of Mackie.
"We would hope to sell one unit this year, two units next year and three units the year after," he added.
As it does not use any water to clean the raw wool, no sludge is created by the process. "No one else is producing a system that can do this ... it is very attractive on the environmental front," Mr Long said. To prove that the new technology could work, a fully operational plant was built in Trieste in northern Italy.
The potential customers for the product are about 300 wool processing plants around the world and Mackie hopes to capture up to 10 per cent of the market initially.
The system will provide major savings for wool processors, according to Mr Long. Having passed through the system, "coarser wool behaves as finer wool, and this gives an advantage of dollars per kilo rather than cents", he said.
