While farmers are reaping higher returns from wool for carpet manufacturers it’s the opposite for workers in the carpet industry where the pain of redundnancy is being felt. 

FIRST Union general secretary, Robert Reid, says high wool prices are making wool-based carpets too expensive and some carpet makers are switching to synthetics.

“As wool climbs it is putting workers out of work in New Zealand.”

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A combination of a high wool price, lack of new housing starts and the lack of progress on the Canterbury rebuild had conspired to send the New Zealand yarn and carpet industry "down the same negative path as the wood processing industry", FIRST Union (formerly NDU) general secretary Robert Reid said.