Loro Piana_ Australia and New Zealand

The Record Bale Award, started in 1999, is an icon of the wool industry. I feel so lucky to have the opportunity to look for the best quality from material around the world. Australia and New Zealand are the perfect places to breed wool. A beautiful, soft handling, very finely crimped. We produce such fine wool because we have a very intensive grading program to produce the very finest wool sheep in the world. Sheep are wonderful creatures, and I love working with them. I love wool. And our flock is a little bit special in that they are all natural colored Merinos, black, gray, and brown. The Saxon Merino has the most exquisite wool that you could ever find. The color is exquisite, and the handle is exquisite. To be able to produce wool of such high quality gives you a great sense of achievement and accomplishment. We have around between 10,000 and 11,000 sheep. It's the genetics. We've got the finest breeding stock in the world, and we just select the best of the best from those. And from there, we could obtain the finest fiber. We love growing the best wool in the world. Loro Piana buys the highest quality, ultra fine wool. The open cry auctions, it's an old traditional method of selling and it's been around since the early 1900s, probably even earlier. Looks quite chaotic, and there's a lot of yelling. Millbank was purchased by my grandfather in 1932. My father took over in 1960. And then my brother Russ and I have continued that passion of wool growing when we took over in 1997. The secret of producing such a rare fine fiber is to have happy, healthy sheep. And here at Millbank, the environment is ideal for the sheep production. The highest level of farming, the respect for nature, respect for the animals. In fifteen years of research on the Record Bale, we bettered the finesses of the wool about close to 30%. It is amazing. This is not plastic. This is not iron. This is not something that you can create. It's what nature creates. The Loro Piana Record Bale is really a small incentive, but it's very important to them. It's very important to us that we have established such direct relationship with all of them. We are very happy and proud to award the ones who make the best wool. The Loro Piana mission is to discover the best, process the best to make the best product.