Vitale Barberis Canonico Fetes a Decade of its Wool Excellence Award

SYDNEY — Multigenerational family businesses were front of mind at Vitale Barberis Canonico’s 2024 Wool Excellence Award in Australia last month. 

Staged at the Josef Chromy Wines estate in Relbia near Launceston, Tasmania — a region with deep connections to the origins of Australia’s superfine wool-growing industry, that produces wool of 17 microns or less — several presenters proudly referenced the number of generations that have ensured the longevity of their wool-growing enterprises.

The trophy went to EML Glenholme in Tarrington, near Hamilton, in the state of Victoria, which is helmed by father-and-son duo Everard and Matthew Linke, the latter the fifth generation of his family to run the property since the mid-19th century. They received 50,000 Australian dollars, or $31,225 at current exchange, in prize money, as well as a weeklong trip to the Italian wool mill’s headquarters in Biella. 

Trophy or no trophy, all Wool Excellence Club members receive a 25 percent premium on the market price for their wool through Vitale Barberis Canonico’s new Australian wool-buying arm VBC Wool, which was established in 2022 to replace New England Wool, the previous, 32-year joint venture with Italy’s Successori Reda.   

“It’s definitely motivation to push you on, to keep doing what you do,” Matthew Linke told WWD after the ceremony. “It’s recognition for the type of wool that we grow and the way that we prepare it. They’re acknowledging the work, the breeding and the time that we put into things. We’ve got bills to pay and the auction system doesn’t provide enough income, you have to have something that goes over and above that and Vitale Barberis Canonico’s Wool Excellence Club is what gets that for us. It’s helped us a lot for the last five years or so.”

The Australian wool industry could do with a helping hand. 

On Dec. 13, the Australian Wool Production Forecasting Committee forecast that in 2024-25 Australia will produce 279.4 million kilograms of wool, a 12 percent decrease from the 2023-24 forecast. The number of sheep shorn is forecast at 63.2 million, down 11.7 percent, the lowest figure since 1903, when the national flock stood at 54 million. 

The lowest wool prices in a decade have prompted many farms to pivot production into other areas such as meat sheep, cross-bred sheep with coarser wool and growing crops. 

“The market at the moment has been quite flat,” said Australian Wool Exchange chief executive officer Mark Grave. “Every time there’s a bit of a rebound in the market…at the moment it seems to be driven more by the dollar than it is demand. We’re all aware of inflationary pressure but the Eastern Market Indicator [Australia’s benchmark wool market indicator] is not anywhere near what it should be to reward or at least make a sustainable living.”

Of the 8 million meters of fabric that Vitale Barberis Canonico produces annually, 90 percent is derived from Australian wool, according to a company spokesperson. 

The Wool Excellence Club and Award were established in 2014 in a bid to shore up supply of Australian superfine wool — and specifically, from the Saxon Merino, a smaller breed of sheep that might yield a smaller cut-per-head yield than other merino sheep but whose “style” of wool is considered unparalleled in terms of color, light, structure, length and softness. 

Sustainability is a key pillar of the Wool Excellence Club and members cannot mules their sheep. Mulesing is a controversial surgical procedure in which flaps of a sheep’s buttocks skin are removed to prevent potentially deadly fly strike. In 2004, the Australian wool industry pledged to phase out the practice by 2010. According to the Sheep Sustainability Framework’s 2024 annual report, however, 57.7 percent of Australian merino wool producers still mules, an increase of 11 percent over 2023. 

But VBC’s incentives would appear to be working, with the Wool Excellence Club numbers essentially doubling in a decade to 29 members, up from 15 in 2014.  

“In 2015, people preferred other kinds of sheep that give a worse wool but the cut [volume] was higher,” said VBC CEO Alessandro Barberis Canonico, who is a member of the 13th generation of the Barberis family to run the company since it was founded in 1663. “Before the premium woolgrowers were going in another direction and Saxon wool was decreasing. We stopped the [decline] and there are now more farms. We hope other woolgrowers join the club.”

To mark the awards’ 10th anniversary VBC flew in a small group of Italian journalists, including representatives from Il Sole 24 Ore, La Repubblica, Corriere della Sera and the Italian editions of Esquire and Vanity Fair. 

During the trip the group visited a Melbourne wool auction house and two Saxon merino farms with direct bloodline links to the foundational flocks introduced to southeast Australia by pioneering pastoralist Eliza Furlong in the early 1800s: Coliban Park in Victoria and the historic Winton stud just outside Launceston, both previous winners of the award. 

Founded in 1835, Winton was the first registered merino stud in Australia and today the 3,300 hectare farm runs about 12,000 Saxon merinos and is operated by John Taylor Junior, the seventh generation of the Taylor family, and his wife Isobel.  

Vitale Barberis Canonico originally began sourcing Australian wool in the 1920s via importers in Europe. In the 1970s, Alberto Barberis Canonico — Alessandro’s father — first traveled to Australia to source the best wool for his fabrics directly. 

In 1982 the company ventured into primary production, acquiring the first of three neighboring wool-growing properties that it operates today in New South Wales: Greenhills, in Pyramul, from which a collection of premium Greenhills-branded fabrics is produced. 

Australian menswear retailer M.J. Bale has used VBC fabrics since the brand’s inception in 2009. In 2015 the retailer developed its own sheep-to-shelf concept by partnering with Tasmania’s carbon positive Kingston merino farm and VBC on the development of fabrics for a range of luxury single-source merino wool suits, tuxedos, blazers and ties called M.J. Bale Kingston made from 16 micron wool. A percentage of each sale is returned to the farm for reinvestment in biodiversity projects. 

“I’m really bullish for Tasmania; I think the Tasmanian opportunity for sustainability and for products of great provenance is enormous,” said M.J. Bale founder Matt Jensen, one of the 70 guests in attendance at the awards — which he described as “essential” for the industry. “It [the award and club] links consumer and weaver or processor and, from our point of view, the brand that’s then buying it together,” he added. “At the end of the day, if VBC is not supporting the local wool industry, then they don’t necessarily have a business. It’s a credit to Alessandro and the Barberis family that they do such things to keep the industry alive. I mean, it’s their life blood.”

“Everyone in the industry needs incentive,” echoed AWEX’s Grave of the value of the Wool Excellence Award to Australian woolgrowers. “I think that they [woolgrowers] all strive for excellence. They are passionate people in a passionate industry and every year they’re trying to do better, trying to fine-tune and meet the needs of the supply chain. And to be recognized for that, like they have been here tonight, in the industry at the moment, with the economy at the moment…having that level of support is something they strive for. It’s a mutual relationship which I think only delivers benefit.”