The FitoWool Mission:

As a producer of wool pellet fertiliser, can you tell me about your business: when did it start? Where did you get the idea of producing fertilising pellets made of wool? Who are your clients?

I am Andrea Veres, co-founder of FitoWool brand and the SME Agrologica. I am a researcher, with a PhD in Plant and Horticultural Sciences and I am also an Honorary Associate Professor at the Hungarian University of Agriculture and Life Sciences.

Knitting is a family tradition and when I asked shepherds in the neighbourhood about, where do they sell wool, they told me that there is no market for it and they don’t know what to do with. Wool is in fact fire resistant, so not even waste management facilities accept it. Back then, in 2O2O, I did research on possible agricultural uses and I found a company in Austria that produced wool mulch mats. The machinery for producing them is quite complex, so I was searching for a rather low-tech solution to utilize wool without scouring. I found just very few examples for wool pellet production in Europe. So, I started a webshop, selling the wool mulch mats and I bought also the machinery for pellet production. There were no actual machines dedicated to wool, but a Czeck biomass pellet producing company suggested a set that might be suitable. We intended to make a small investment first, to explore the market for wool pellets and also to do scientific research, so it was a good solution for us. It is still a small capacity facility, we can produce 1Otonnes, per year, but it seams to be OK at the moment for the Hungarian market.

We were very lucky to have a support of the Oázis Garden Franchise. They saw the value of our product and they were willing to distribute our pellets with their own brand name. This opportunity gave us a financial stability in the beginning, when we were trying to introduce the wool pellets to the market. We also had the support of influencers, Mark McMenemy from KertTV and Mihály Sipos, from Sustainable retro-innovation, they increased our credibility and encouraged people to try wool pellets, becauses the idea of wool as a fertilizer seams strange to a lot of people on the first sight.

Or main costumers are hobby gardeners at the moment, however we are building partnerships on use in urban green areas and also in horticultural crops. We do a lot of research in collaboration with the Hungarian University of Agriculture and Life Sciences to develop best practices and more specific use cases.

What are the environmental benefits of wool pellets as fertiliser in terms of soil health and carbon footprint?

There are two main benefits of wool as an organic material in agriculture. First, wool retains water three times of its own weight, and it is also releasing it quite easily, so it makes water available for both plans and beneficial organisms in the rhizosphere. Second, it is a pure protein, rich in N and S, that is released however only through microbiological decomposition. This means that nutrition is released slowly, steadily while supporting soil microbiological community, and these two factors are extremely beneficial in terms of plant physiology. Plants become more resistant to pests and diseases, and the fast weed development due to the excessive N can be reduced. In fact, overdose of N, even in form of organic manure, results in a too quick development of the plants, that become vulnerable for pests and diseases.

So at one hand, we have a biomass with great benefits as organic amendment to the soil, at the other hand we have challenges like frequent drought, CO2 emission related to synthetic fertilizer use, overuse of pesticides and waste management issues. So, I believe that recycling wool as wool pellets could potentially substitute synthetic fertilizers, reduce carbon footprint of agriculture while making the agricultural systems more climate change resistant.

What type of wool are you after and where does it come from?

We accept wool from healthy and living animals only, that are shred on a clean surface. In addition, wool needs to be stored in a dry place. We have no preference for the sheep bread and we accept of course the whole wool that comes from an animal. Even though there are many requests to us to process wool, we usually accept wool from local breeders to reduce impacts related to the transportation.

How did sheep farmers react when you expressed interest in their sheep’s wool, which they knew to be considered as waste until then?

At the very beginning, farmers thought that we are crazy to start a business like that, but they were very happy that we took their wool and they were willing to give it to us even for free. 

How did your entrepreneurial journey unfold: what difficulties did you have to overcome? (Access to finance, safe testing environment, up-scaling etc. Did the EU CAP Network help?)

Wool pellets are entirely new products on the market and potential B2B partners argue, that we need to create demand first on the consumer side and then they will do business with us. That means a strong need of investment in PR and marketing.

In addition, wool pellets are quite expensive in comparison to other manure pellets due to the higher production costs. This is a main barrier for organic farmers to adopt it. There is always the difficult question of scaling up the production. Bigger machines were more cost effective, that could result in lower prices, but we intend to invest to increase our production only, if there is a serious demand on the market. We are not sure that it is technically even possible to scale up and to meet the regulatory requirements. Wool is not a homogenous material. There are significant differences in humidity, fibre strength, grease content, and the pelleting machine needs to be adapted in order to reach the required temperature and to get hard enough wool pellets. This needs experience and constant supervision of the production.

We have received a lot of support from our local CAP office to submit a Leader project, and we are intending to submit a Horizon project with the colleagues of the EU CAP Network. To be honest, we have been investing a lot of time, money and effort with my family and my business partners, because we believe in this story. It’s a mission, a dream for us, this is why we achieved, what we have achieved. We are very happy that value of wool as a biomass has been increasingly recognised and we hope that we will develop a sustainable business.

As a member of the EU Cap Network focus group on wool, what is the current state of the wool industry in Europe? What are its main outlets? Which types of fibres are valued and which are considered waste?

First of all, the European textile industry uses imported wool from the other side of the world. The reason for that is, that large scale industry facilities need standard high quality fine wool available continuously and in large quantity. The European wool supply is fragmented, and therefore the market price is very low.

In Europe, there is a high diversity of different local sheep breads, that is very valuable not only because of the local tradition, but also because of the high value as genetic resource of the species. The scope of breeding in some cases is wool, like in case of Merino, but there is a significant part of European sheep that are hold for milk or meat production. In this case, the sheep is not selected genetically for it’s wool quality, which is therefore very variable.

At the one hand, there is a need of organizing farmers in associations that support them to provide more unified quantity and quality of wool, meanwhile there is a need of innovation in processing different quality wool into high value fibres. In addition, there is need to scale different industry facilities enabling to process local wool. 

There is also a need of a European level classification system, that allows wool to be sorted based on the final product that it will be used for and not on fibre properties, as it is done now. And of course, alternative processing industry facilities utilizing lower classes of wool need to be developed.

What are the opportunities in the bioeconomy for European wool? (Insulation for buildings, textiles, bedding, etc.)

Within textile industry, there is an opportunity to utilize wool in interior design, while wool is also suitable of both acoustic and heat insulation of buildings. There are good examples in Scottland, where wool is used in road construction. There are case studies on using wool in green walls and green roofs, and there is a great potential of wool as peat substitute in potting soils. Agriculture is main sector, that could utilize wool as fertilizer and soil amendment to retain water, or as mulching material, but also as a potential biomass for protein production. Wool could be used as wrapping materials for packaging, even to deliver food that needs refrigerating.

What infrastructure needs to be developed to allow for the wool value chain to grow?

First of all, there is a need of farmers associations to have a stronger representation of farmers on the market and also to help farmers to adjust their production to the market needs for example through organizing trainings on the pre-sorting and preparation of wool.

As I have mentioned before, there is a need of unified European wool classification system that is based on use-case classes instead of fiber classes and review of EU regulation to support trade.

Different scale of processing technologies, both for textile and non-textile use of wool need to be made available, as well as innovative, low-medium tech technologies need to be dveloped.

Finally, costumers are not aware of the origin of wool products, so there is a need of clear labelling and certification system.

What is the purpose and added value of the EU CAP network dedicated to the wool value chain?

Personally, I learned a lot form my colleagues in the working group about the state of wool value chain, that is very important for my communication to our stakeholders. We are not only stating the problems, but we formulate suggestions to overcome the key issues and communicate them to the decision makers.