Know Your Wool (KYW): Where does our wool come from?
Last updated: June 20, 2024
Woola’s products are made of scrap wool that would otherwise be burned or buried. The type of wool we use is so coarse that it cannot be used to produce yarn for the textile industry.
But where does this wool come from? How do we ensure the wool is responsibly sourced? How do we know that it comes from farmers that share our values, especially when it comes to prioritising animal welfare?
Well, similarly to how the financial industry has a standard Know Your Customer (KYC) due diligence process, Woola has a Know Your Wool (KYW) process.
From UK farms to locally-sourced wool
In the early days of Woola, we relied completely on leftover wool from the United Kingdom, a country with long standing sheep farming traditions and the most sheep in Europe. As such, it’s no surprise that the UK has the most developed methods of processing any quality of wool, which made it the most accessible source of leftover wool for us to kick off our production.
From the very beginning, we set high standards when choosing our suppliers to make sure the sheep are treated well throughout the supply chain. However, there are a lot of grey areas in the wool industry, and in many cases, not a whole lot of transparency or traceability.
So, in 2022 we set up local sourcing of wool. In other words, we switched to sourcing wool directly from local farmers in Estonia, who we can personally meet and visit.
Our new way of sourcing the material serves two key goals when it comes to sustainability. It allows us to:
really know our wool and
lower our transport emissions.
Image source: Postimees
Setting the scene: sheep farming in Estonia
Before we dive into the specifics of our Know Your Wool process, let’s get to know Estonia’s sheep farming a bit.
All of the facts and figures below are taken from Estonia’s Ministry of Rural Affairs Sheep Farming Development Plan for 2018-2023, unless noted otherwise.
Low profitability, high percentage of sheep farming for own consumption
Although sheepherding has a long history in Estonia, it has not been a lucrative business in the recent decades due to the lack of appropriate supply chains. As a result, Estonia does not have factory farms and most sheep farmers only own small flocks.
In fact, only 14% of all sheep farmers in Estonia own more than 100 sheep. It’s also worth noting that organic sheep farming is very common, as about 63% of all sheep in Estonia are raised following organic agriculture standards.
To make it even more clear to you just how small the industry is in Estonia: there are just a handful of professional sheep shearers in the entire country.
Since Estonia’s wool industry is not well-organised and there’s a lack of supporting services that would be required to make it a viable business (such as washing and carding), the sheep aren’t really grown for their wool. All of this also means as much as 90% of the wool goes to waste.
So, it is true that sheep in Estonia are primarily raised for meat. However, as the prices are not very competitive, it’s done mainly for farmers’ own consumption and not for commercial distribution.
Additionally, sheep farming plays an important role in protecting the biodiversity of Estonia. As sheep graze, they help maintain the ecology and landscape of the area. This is also one of the key reasons why sheep farming in Estonia is generously subsidised, given that commercial sheep farming is not lucrative.
Standards of regulation
The small size of the sheep farming industry does not mean a lack of regulation. All sheep farmers are legally obliged to register with the Agricultural Registers and Information Board (PRIA). Once registered, they are automatically subject to regular audits from the Agriculture and Food Board (PTA), who issue precepts if the animals are not well taken care of or if the farm has any issues that need to be eliminated.
The best part? Any and all such precepts are public information – so anyone can look up whether a sheep farm has been issued precepts regarding their farming practices.
Even further, you can look up whether a sheep farm has registered itself as such, review the purpose of why they’re keeping the sheep and view the farm area visually on a satellite-view map.
In many cases, you can even see the actual sheep on the map! Here’s an example of one such supplier of our wool:
Our KYW process
The Agriculture and Food Board’s audits are independent 3rd party reviews and as such offer a great starting point for Knowing Your Wool. However, we have taken our KYW process a few steps further.
Woola’s KYW process requires that the sheep farmer meets the following five conditions:
the sheep farmer is registered as an animal keeper with the Agricultural Registers and Information Board (PRIA),
they do not have any precepts from the Agriculture and Food Board (PTA),
they provide sheep with free range outdoor space,
they provide sheep with cover in case of changing weather conditions and
the sheep are “Woola-happy” (we cross this checkbox only if we'd be happy to live there as sheep).
While we do not share our KYW tracking database publicly, here’s a sneak peek of what it looks like, with a couple example farms we are due to visit in July 2024:
Additionally, we keep track of the amount of wool we have sourced from each farm, the age of the wool, whether we’ve completed an in-person visual audit there ourselves and some administrative info, such as the wool’s colour, scouring date (to keep track whether the batch is already processed and then being used to make Woola products) and storage method.
Following our Know Your Wool process, we can be confident that the wool we use is sourced responsibly and sustainably – and with our transparency into the process, hopefully, now you have such confidence, too.
P.S: Be sure to follow us on social media and keep eye on our blog for more updates, as we’re making our supply chain fully local and transparent.
