When sheep and goat pox reached Spain in September 2022, ending a 50-year disease-free streak, farmers could foresee complications. Especially those dedicated to exporting to other countries. What few surely imagined at the time was that almost 21 months later and despite having regained their former safe producer status, they would continue to suffer the consequences of the virus in wool, a key market.

Here’s why: in a scenario already complicated by the Covid legacy and competition from synthetic fibers, Spain has yet to reconnect with China, one of the most important markets for wool producers.

From this disease… These are the ones who don’t like it. In a nutshell, this is the situation facing many Spanish companies dedicated to wool exports, and how they see China refusing to do so, more than a year and a half after the first cases of sheep and goat pox were confirmed in the country. Open their doors again. Even though these cases are now behind us and Spain gained safe country status a long time ago, the Asian giant still does not open the doors of its market.

Review of dates. To understand this, we need to go back to September 2022, when the first outbreak of the disease was confirmed in Spain. This caused the country to lose its status as a smallpox-free country in the eyes of the WHOA, which affected the industry’s exports. This happened, for example, with Chinese and Spanish wool. Beijing has decided to close its borders to products from Spain, a setback given the Asian giant’s enormous weight in the industry.

The warning did not last long. If the first case was detected on September 19, 2022, the last epidemic was recorded in May 2023, and only a few months later, in September of the same year, the Ministry of Agriculture announced that Spain had achieved the status of a smallpox-free country. . sheep and goats. Earlier, the EC had already eased the restrictions. The problem is that this new administrative scenario was not reflected at the commercial level in China, which, as the Efe Agro agency recalls, chose not to reopen its borders for wool from Spain.

Hit a key market. If China’s decision is so superior to the industry, it’s because theirs isn’t just any market. A Ministry of Agriculture report with 2022 data shows that a third of the wool exported during that year (6,268 tonnes) went to China, far exceeding the amount going to other destinations such as Morocco (2,268 tonnes) or Portugal (1,558 tonnes). ton). 2020 data shows that the Asian giant is the largest market with an export weight approaching 36%.

In the new scenario, with the closure of China’s doors, wool exports in Spain suffered a serious decline. Citing Foreign Trade data, Efe Agro states that between March 2023 and the same month of 2024, Spain exported just over 9,000 tons of wool, well below the annual 14,000 tons recorded before Beijing secured its borders.

Felipe Molina, farm owner and general secretary of the Merino breeders association (Aecme), offers another interesting perspective: Due to the uncertainty in the market, they could not offer you an estimated price for a kilo of wool in 2019. In China, the price of merino wool reached 2.4 euros per kilo.

So what is the reason? Million dollar question. If the health scenario today is different from that in 2022, why hasn’t China been able to recover its usual demand? There are several explanations. According to Molina, this is not a health issue, but rather a “political issue.” In fact, the industry has already demanded a “diplomatic” effort from the Government to get Beijing to change its position, and the Interovic organization recently accompanied the European Commissioner for Agriculture on a mission to China, where he insisted on the need to “reopen” did. .” of the wool market.

“He doesn’t want our wool anymore”. Adrián Sánchez from Lanas de Extremadura recently shared another thought: Newspaper. According to him, the current scenario is explained by the combination of market and politics. “80 to 90% of Spanish wool went to China. Even though the WHO has determined that Spain is free of sheep and goat pox, the Asian giant no longer wants our wool. The Chinese have plenty of wool and are not interested in opening it up.” Moreover, Spanish politicians do not seem willing to seek solutions,” he laments.

Health reluctance or demand? He’s not the only one pointing in a similar direction. Other prominent voices in the industry agree that the drop in demand can be explained by China’s lockdown, but also by a shift in the textile industry and its reliance on synthetic fibres.

This explains why China, beyond its health reluctance, is not interested in continuing the pre-2022 situation with Spanish wool. The key: demand. Or rather, its absence. The agricultural sector report also noted that wool production in Spain has been on a “declining trend” for over a decade, accompanied by a decline in population censuses.

beyond china. China’s trade policy is not the only policy that explains the situation facing the industry. Different trends are also coming into play in the market itself. recently recognized Newspaper Marco Antonio Calderon from Digaisa: “COVID-19 came and unsold clothes were produced and less wool was used. Demand fell to historic lows […] “This also affects the course of the second-hand clothing market and the rise in prices.”

“Apart from the closure of the Chinese market with COVID, the production of carpets, especially those consumed in hotels and cruise ships, has also suffered and been affected by the impact of the epidemic on the tourism sector,” adds Carlos Bernués. Pastores Group. reporter. The newspaper states that by 2019, approximately 80% of Aragon products were directed to the huge textile industry in China.

Effect after one and a half years. The consequences of over a year and a half of shutting down China were not long in coming. Efe Tarım speaks of “tons of product piling up in warehouses” that are not listed on the markets and a second year when wool will find no place. Newspaper It states that companies such as its partners Lanas de Extremadura and Digaisa have accumulated more than 3,000 million kilos of products obtained from Extremaduran merino sheep in their warehouses. Despite their quality, they cannot find a place for themselves in either the national or international market.

The industry needs to cope with the challenges that accompany the new scenario. For example, the need not to lose the expert workforce that must be relied upon to run its business in the future. Another no less difficult challenge is what to do with accumulated wool, which can deteriorate over time.

“Warehouses are overflowing, there is enormous traffic congestion around the world, the product is not marketed at all; we are in a situation where there is no longer room for wool anywhere in Aragon,” Bernués warned in March.

Pictures | Jan-Willem Reusink (Flickr) and National Rural Information Exchange (Flickr)

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