Integrity of wool supply chain given boost with new app

The Australian Wool Exchange (AWEX) has worked with Microsoft partner MicroChannel to build a smartphone app and cloud-based system that lets wool classers create, capture and manage inventory data arising from the wool harvesting process in a shearing shed.

Leveraging Microsoft Azure, WoolClip is intended to replace slow and error prone manual processes across the wool sector.

Wool can’t be processed until the paperwork associated with each fleece and mob is complete, and a ‘National Wool Declaration’ is issued. Without this process, the integrity of the supply chain can be compromised, affecting the production of 340 million kilograms of wool, worth $3.1 billion according to AWEX.

WoolClip was developed to allow AWEX’s 17,000 authorised wool classers to enter data directly from the shearing shed on their phone – without the need for internet access — as the majority don’t have computers in the sheds. When connection is possible, the collated information on the app is synched and secured to Azure.

WoolClip ensures that on-farm data can be made available efficiently to the first receiver in the wool supply chain. It also establishes a traceable system for wool bales as they progress through the system and boosts the overall information integrity of the wool industry.

Ross Smith, CRM and marketing automation practice manager at from MicroChannel said uploading the information to WoolClip ensures the efficient processing and monitoring of wool in the supply chain

“We always say Australia was built on the sheep’s back,” he said. “We’re taking that to the next level and helping to make the industry more efficient and accountable, with the provenance of wool made clear all the way from the sheep’s back right through to the completion of processing.”