Polish sheep wool for improved resource utilisation and value creation

About this project

<p>How can an under-utilized natural resource - wool from remote mountain regions - be maximized into materials in local sustainable industry innovation systems that offer high returns on investment and contribute to an optimized, next-generation circular economy? Mapping, understanding and further developing products from the biomass for interior sound-absorption/acoustic properties and for soil enhancement will be at opposite ends of our research scope - ensuring innovation, impact, resource and fibre-property utilisation. With both a highly practical and important theoretical dimension, the project leverages knowledge-transfer between a diverse set of industrial developments, alongside research and scientific approaches.<br> The project team is composed of research, education and business experts on wool, fibre-properties, resource maximizing, value-chains, value-creation, dissemination and certainly knowledge-transfer. Alongside the practical and environmental work with the wool, a theoretical approach will aim to change the discourse on how resource utilisation leverages a more sustainable future. The team also has access to an international pool of experts within the fields the call addresses, with the potential for impact beyond Norway and Poland. Beyond the call themes, the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals are at the core of the project. Through better understanding how the wool from the Polish Beskid mountains can, through grazing, optimisation value-enhancement and dissemination of results and environmental consequences, Woolume aims to “up the volume” for best practices to enhance biodiversity and carbon sequestering, alongside economic gain, in a low-income agricultural region. The consortium leverages research, education and business in a complimentary triangle where complimentary competences are the key to the project’s success.</p>

Bilateral cooperation results

The project aimed to improve the utilization of wool from Polish mountain sheep by cooperation between research entities and businesses in Norway and Poland. The project has been based on the fact that Norway has high wool utilization, with a functioning value chain for wool and where consumers use wool in clothing and interior textiles. Poland, on the other hand, is a country with low wool utilization, where local wool is being discarded to a large degree, where the value chain for local wool has collapsed and where daily clothing and interior textiles to a much lesser degree are made from wool. During the project implementation, the SIFO (Norwegian research partner) conducted market research and prepared reports reviewing the possibilities of using surplus local wool in manufacturing acoustic panels, carpets and fertiliser pellets. The Selbu Spinning Mill (Norwegian industrial partner) performed several technological trials using Polish wool to manufacture rug yarns and transferred knowledge on wool sorting and classification. Various activities took place to gather and transfer knowledge between the project partners and the public. These included visits to the two partner countries by the principal investigator, young researcher and work package leaders, co-writing, sharing experiences on social media and via the newsletter, and sharing all the reports and knowledge created within the project. During the end conference, several aspects related to knowledge transference around the use of wool and understanding of cultural, economic, and policy drivers in Europe were identified and recorded. The bilateral collaboration with Norwegian partners will continue in future and should result in the preparation of an application for the next project under the Norwegian grants program. The collaboration will also be carried out internationally, in the frame of international projects such as COST Action and/or other EU programmes.

Project partners

• Oslo Metropolitan University Donor project partner· Norway
• Selbu spinneri AS Donor project partner· Norway
• Centre of regional produce in Koniakow Maria Kohut Project partner· Poland