5 minutes with Logan Williams
Inventor of Keravos and NZ Merino Company Director of Technology and Innovation What is your background and how did your interest in wool technology emerge? I’m personally attracted to crises. So growing up in Timaru, dairy and wool are common staples in South Canterbury. I’ve seen first-hand the entire collapse of the wool industry. It now costs more to shear the sheep than you get for the wool. I’ve created a range of inventions that help solve other real-world problems in a lot of other industries. The collapse of the wool price is a tragedy
| Logan Williams
6 | THE FARMLANDER
and I felt like I could develop a product
method of combining PLA from corn
that would really be able to channel
starch with coarse wool.
value back to the farmers.
So we find a product that we think is
What is Keravos? How did you come up with this idea and when?
really cool, we approach the brand and
I joined New Zealand Merino with the sole
(to elevate its performance and improve
purpose of trying to create an invention
its story) and we make the pellets and
from strong wool. After about 6 months I
put them into their factory and they don’t
had developed the invention.
have a change a single thing.
There is 220,000 tonnes of wool
There is no barrier to entry and they are
produced in New Zealand each year.
just using the same infrastructure that’s
The only market that can deal with this
already there. They don’t have to spend
volume is plastics. They use millions and
money to change their factories at all.
millions of tonnes a year. At its very core Keravos makes pellets
What do you think the biggest drawcard for Keravos is?
by combining wool and a plastic
The first is that the wool and polymer
substitute called polylactic acid (PLA),
improves the strength. Another is
and those pellets are the building
its weight, so it’s lighter. It’s more
blocks of all materials. So I invented a
sustainable, even if we are bonding
say ‘we want to put wool in your product’
| Keravos pellets combine wool and polylactic acid (PLA), a plastic substitute.
Farmlands Co-operative Society Limited | © June 2021. All rights reserved.
WWW.FARMLANDS.CO.NZ
