Depot Update from Stephen & Jayne

For this issue of Graze we caught up with joint depot managers Stephen Preston & Jayne Harkness-Bones.

With the busy summer months behind us, the depot is still working as hard as ever in providing members with a high level of service.

Grader & manager Stephen is still busy with the team as they strive to hit their weekly target of 40,000kg!

Stephen commented ‘Every day at the depot is busy regardless of the time of year as we literally have thousands of kilos of wool to grade by hand every day. As there are so many different grades of wool, it’s essential that we keep momentum in processing every fleece accurately and efficiently. Now that the summer months have passed, our summer temps have finished and we are back to the regular crew.

Everyone works so hard in delivering a quality service, and we appreciate when farmers want to stop for a chat or to see their wool being graded. It’s been another difficult year as prices continue to be depressed, but we want farmers to know that we continue to try our best’.

Up in the office we caught up with Jayne ‘I can’t believe it’s nearly October as farmers are getting ready for winter and the next tupping season is just around the corner. The office continues to be busy with calls, from booking in wool to changing details, to registering new members, there’s never a dull day. Some of our drop-off sites will also be closing for the winter as they, like our farmer members, need their sheds for other uses and I would encourage anyone who hasn’t yet got their wool to a drop-off site, to check when they finish up, and remember, it’s free of charge to drop your wool off at any of our drop-off sites as I’ve had a few calls this year from farmers to check if it’s still free’.

Some other exciting news is that we were successful in getting sponsorship from The Worshipful Company of Woolmen to deliver a school’s project called ‘Wool Innovators’. We are working in collaboration with SENTINUS who will deliver the project to 10 randomly selected schools in the coming months. We are very excited to be working with young people to teach them why sheep farming is important, why we need to shear sheep, and why wool is amazing!’

A full round-up of the project will be shared once it’s been completed in May next year.

If you aren’t sure where your nearest FREE drop-off is you can use our depot network locator here: https://www.ulsterwool.com/ulster-depot-network