Fourth-generation farmer and wool champion Kate Drury has recently been named as one of 50 winners of Women in Innovation Awards for her attempts to increase market share for sustainable ropes for uses as diverse as dog leads, sheep halters, and offshore kelp farms.
Her Mytholmroyd-based company Sustainable Rope offers a sustainable alternative to traditional plastic rope, reducing microplastic pollution, by championing British wool and its value.
Kate is passionate about supporting British sheep farmers and championing wool and its value. She says not only does sourcing all her wool through the auction – where graders take about four years to learn their skill – give her both assurance and insurance, it also allows her to support all 35,000 sheep farmers as opposed to just one if she were to buy direct from the farm gate.
Kate, who was elected as a British Wool board member in 2021, is passionate that her rope can move from farm to consumer while being made solely in the UK, meaning she has oversight of the entire supply chain. The long-term aim is for her innovation to increase demand for wool, and, in turn, increase the return to Britain’s farmers.
She believes that in the face of tough wool prices and a difficult market the key is investing energy into innovation.
“Things must change because the market is not sustainable as it is. We know what we can head for but it’s the how we do it that is the issue. I want to empower farmers. Currently, their return is resultant of the market, so we’ve got to change that.”
The way to do it, she says, is to look beyond the traditional markets for wool and highlight the scope of innovation the fibre offers.
“There’s a lot of research around innovation within the product, but we need innovation in new markets that have never used wool, which is where I’ve positioned my company,” she adds.
