Speaker Notes

Written by: Dr. Trevor Mahar, Australian Wool Testing Authority Ltd.

A series of trials was initiated in the early 1980’s to examine the predictability of top fibre length for commercial processing consignments based on raw wool specifications.

The trial were organised by the Australian Wool Corporation (AWC), now known as The Woolmark Company, the Australian Wool Testing Authority Ltd (AWTA Ltd) and CSIRO Division of Wool Technology.

The trials were officially known as the Trials Evaluating Additional Measurement (TEAM) in reference to the industry term “Additional Measurements”. This covered the recently introduced tests for Staple Length (SL), Staple Strength (SS) and POB.

TEAM was conducted in 2 stages. The first stage saw the TEAM 1 report issued in 1985 to coincide with the commercial release of the ATLAS instrument which measured SL, SS and POB. A formula was developed from this stage of the trial.

In 1988 a TEAM 2 report was issued after more processing was conducted and a larger database of consignments was available. The formula issued in this report is the one recommended as a starting point for mills today.

In total, TEAM involved trials with 28 mills in 12 countries and encompassed 603 commercial consignments.

Simple, multiple regression techniques were used to analyse the data collected.