Meet Blatnaid Gallagher, co-founder of the Galway Wool Co-Op
You're going to want to hear the story of Irish grown wool.
Everyone loves a David and Goliath story.
The little guy trots out into the battlefield and takes down the sneering giant with a well aimed slingshot.
Everyone comes out of hiding and cheers wildly.
David becomes king.
Leonard Cohen writes a song.
I regret to inform you that there is a giant of immense proportion roaming Ireland at the moment. Unlike Goliath, this fellow has many heads, too many to count. He stands with one foot in Dublin and with the other, kicks sand in almost every eye.
His name shall not be spoken, but he is generally known as ‘That’s how things are.’
He taunts dreamers and do-ers alike; few are brave enough to challenge him.
Meet Blatnaid Gallagher.
An organic farmer with a background in business and marketing, Blatnaid is a recent graduate of the NUIG Masters degree in Agricultural innovation.
This springboard programme invites participants to find an agricultural problem and create an innovative solution; Blatnaid turned her attention to the problem of Irish grown wool.
Frustrated by low wool prices and the mislabelling of wool products sold in Ireland, Blathnaid and a handful of sheep farmers founded the Galway Wool Co-Op in 2020.
I love the co-operative way of doing things, it was the most successful business medium in the past for farmers and I think it’s going to work again with Irish grown wool.’
My name is Dr Aoife Long and I write weekly articles about the slow fashion scene in Ireland. Sometimes it’s an interview with an Irish designer, sometimes it’s an essay on history of textiles and the people who made them.
In Ireland, there is a story under every stone and an artist under every rock. I fully expect the internet to disappear before I run out of stories.
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The Galway Wool Co-op is a farmer to mill initiative, devoted to the promotion of wool from the Galway sheep breed.
According to the Galway Sheep Breeders Association website, the Galway is Ireland's only native Sheep breed and has been granted Rare Breed Status.
Against all odds, the Association has kept the breed alive for a century; meat breeders don’t want the Galway because it doesn’t grow fast enough, wool buyers don’t want the Galway because it is not merino.
A sheep breeder herself, Blatnaid refused to accept that this is simply how things are.
I realised I couldn’t walk away, I had to do something about it.’
So I started to approach mills; I had buyers before I had suppliers.
I said to Chris Weiniger, the general manager of Donegal Yarns ‘I won’t just give you Irish wool, I’m going to give you Native Irish wool from the sheep that created the Irish textiles industry.’
It’s a bold claim, but there is evidence to support it.
The story of the Galway sheep is closely intertwined with the economic fortunes of Irish women; the knitting of Aran sweaters (with wool from lowland sheep) provided much needed employment for women in rural Ireland.
And now the story has come full circle.
Blatnaid’s drive to create a vertical supply chain for Galway wool from field to mill has produced results which are tangible and not merely poetic.
In 2021, the Galway Wool co-op sold 12,000 pounds of wool to Donegal Yarns last year at 12 times the average market price.
Blatnaid sees herself as a bridge between wool producers and new markets.
She is representative of a new breed of marketers; head in the clouds, feet firmly in wellies.
‘There is a huge amount of realism when you get to know me. There’s a lot of business sense in what I’m trying to do.’
Blatnaid notes the parallels between food and fibre; the slow but steady emergence of organic food in recent years may provide a model for the immediate future of Irish grown wool.
‘When Fergal Quinn decided to put a really small shelf of organic food into his stores, everyone said ‘That’s not going to work. The product is too dear, people can’t afford it.
And now every supermarket in Ireland and across the globe has an organic section of food. People are now afforded that choice.’
Soon Irish woollen mills and knitwear stores will be asked to devote a small amount of shelf space to Irish grown wool products.
‘We realise that the consumer is looking for merino products.
We know that there is a huge cost of production in Ireland and we know there are people who cannot afford that cost.
But we want to offer people the choice to buy Irish wool produce.’
The giant glares.
There is competition, of course.
Long famed for their fine, soft wool, the merino sheep produces up to 18kg of wool per year; for obvious reasons, merino wool dominates the modern textile industry.
Established in Spain in the middle Ages, the merino breed thrives in warm, dry climates. A strict Spanish monopoly for hundreds of years, the breed was eventually exported with great success to South Africa, Australia, and New Zealand.
Though frequently used in Irish knitwear (and advertised as Irish wool), there is no merino wool grown in Ireland; the Irish climate is simply not suitable.
‘We know the merino is the most beautiful & versatile wool in the world… but it is not Irish.
Galway wool will not replace merino (though, in fact, the Galway breed does actually contain some Merino, in addition to Romney and Leicester genetics).
Blatnaid’s primary objective is to use her talents to tell the story of Irish grown wool.
She is a gifted and succinct storyteller, as can be seen in Irish media coverage of the Galway Wool Co-op.
And the next chapter?
‘We need to cross the chasm from wool being produced on farms to sustainable home interiors. I believe that home interiors is where the market is for Irish wool (and particularly Galway wool). From cushions to rugs, there is an array of products which could utilise the entire wool clip of Ireland.
We want to make Galway Wool products the ultimate gift for someone abroad to receive.
Galway wool yarn has proven to be an unexpected winner among hand knitters. The strong, yellow-cream yarn is currently sold out; a sign, perhaps, of the snowballing interest in truly local produce.
In another sign of the tide turning, the remaining Irish textile industry is showing interest in the potential of Galway Wool.
When I spoke to Blatnaid, she was deep in preparations for this year’s Meitheal, or gathering, of wool producers in Athenry, Co. Galway. (More on this later.)
I am pleased to report the gathering was a great success this year; 5,000 kg of Galway wool was collected, inspected and loaded onto a Bradford bound truck to be washed.
One of the key goals of the Meitheal is to determine the quality of Galway Wool.
In order to ensure that the traditionally high standards of Galway wool are mainatined, the Galway Wool Co-Op has introduced a fleece competition with prizes sponsored by several Irish businesses.
Among them is Patrick Temple, the CEO of Magee’s. A renewable energy engineer by trade and a tweed expert by blood, Mr Temple prioritises the use of natural fibres such as wool, cashmere, and flax. In addition to sponsoring (and judging) the fleece competition, he is working closely with the Galway Wool Co-Op. There is much work to be done to produce a Galway tweed; sheep must be selectively bred to produce the finest fibre possible. If the project is successful, Galway wool tweed could achieve a cachet, akin to that of the legally protected & culturally significant Harris tweed.
For this reason, the Galway Wool Co-Op are eager to attain the coveted Geographical Indicator status; products with this certification enjoy certain legal protections under EU law to avoid copycats. Examples include Gruyère cheese from Switzerland and Irish whiskey.
Blatnaid fields dozens of calls from students and researchers each month, but one project in particular caught her eye.
A researcher named Dr Sive Geoghegan, PhD has applied to Enterprise Ireland to fund a wool traceability study from farm to final product on the store shelf. With it’s meticulous flock-book and burgeoning customer base, the Galway Wool Co-Op is a natural choice for this study.
Dr Geoghegan has previously completed a similar farm to product study with Irish whiskey; using DNA analysis, you can apparently trace the barley from the farm to the glass to prove its authenticity.
Fully traceable Galway Wool will lend serious credence to the artists and companies who use it and will encourage people to explore the provenance of other wools sold in Ireland.
‘As Irish people, we need to recognise our own breed of sheep.’
Galway wool has such a good story, it practically sells itself.
Readers of this newsletter know that clothing production can actually be good for the environment, rather than a necessary evil; sheep actively sequester carbon into the wool.
So why is not a single politician talking about this poster child of sustainability?
Blatnaid attributes the deafening silence to a widespread reluctance to talk about wool.
‘I think there is a certain negative stigma attached to people who live and work outside of cities and towns.
If you’re living in the countryside in the UK and you’re producing food, there’s a respect there for that.
But that doesn’t exist here.’
(It should be noted that everyone in those cities and towns is, at most, a granny away from the countryside.)
Sometimes only a tweak is required; Blatnaid believes that the simplest change of terminology will completely alter the wider perception of wool.
‘When wool becomes known as a biofibre, everyone, from researchers to politicians, will start to talk about it.
Biofibres are a key element in achieving carbon neutrality and are absolutely part of the solution to climate change.’
And when that is recognised, investment will inevitably follow suit.
In the last few weeks, the Irish government has quietly published the long awaited Wool Feasibility study (which can be viewed here).
A thorough summary of the current state of the Irish wool industry and the myriad potential uses of Irish Wool, the report is akin to an incredibly detailed map with several key sheets missing. We know where we are, we know where we want to go and we have no idea how to get there.
Through the public consultation process, Blatnaid made several submissions to the study, using key figures highlighted by her masters degree research.
So how many sheep are there in Ireland?
The answer is approximately 3.5 million in the Republic; with an average fleece size of 3kg, Ireland produces around 10 million kg of wool annually. (That’s 11,000 tonnes for the Americans in the room.)
Where does it go?
If it leaves the farm, the wool is transported to depots, purchased by wool merchants, exported to the UK and used to make carpets.
The reality is that huge amounts of wool no longer leaves the farm; wool prices are so low, that it is not worth the diesel to drive to the depot.
Sheep must still be shorn regardless of the price; shearers charge €3 per sheep, wool merchants pay 20c per kg, which is about 60c per fleece.
‘That means there is a deficit of 2.40€ per sheep in the agricultural community.
If you have 30,000 sheep farmers, that’s a lot of money.
I’m not an economist but it’s obvious we need to solve that problem.’
Speaking of money…
Blatnaid is not paid for her all consuming work with the Galway Wool Co-Op.
The last two and a half years of her life has been a ceaseless whirlwind of calls, emails and social media management.
‘I do this purely out of passion for getting the story told honestly.’
But burnout looms and her time as secretary of the Galway Wool Co-Op must come to an end.
Blatnaid must tend to her organic farm, her sheep, her rare butterflies and the man who still gives her butterflies.
In order to continue, the Galway Wool Co-Op will have to hire a full time administer and PR manager; in reality, a nationwide wool council must be established to tackle the larger issue of Irish wool, regardless of the breed.
All wool has value; the only question is how best to find it.
Blatnaid and other farmers are keen to point out that the success of the Galway wool co-op can (and should) be replicated across every breed and county of Ireland.
One potential use for Irish wool is home insulation.
It’s a trendy topic at the moment; many trees have made the ultimate sacrifice for Irish government reports on energy efficiency. Basically the plan is to upgrade 500,000 homes to a more efficient energy rating by 2030.
Europe’s largest producer of insulation, Kingspan, is based in Cavan; could they be persuaded by a combination of canny marketing and legislation to use Irish grown wool?
Blatnaid says yes.
Were the Irish government to only purchase Irish wool insulation for state sponsored retrofitting and social housing, this would light a fire under Kingspan to invest in the biofibre supply chain.
The Irish government has set aside €8 billion euros for retrofitting homes; the annual raw material cost of Irish wool would be a minuscule €2 million (at 20c per kg) or €24 million (at the new industry standard of €2.50 per kg).
And the finished sheep’s wool insulation is actually cheaper (and significantly less toxic) than spray foam insulation.
Which would you choose?
There is, however, a sense of urgency to this plan.
According to Blatnaid, the Irish wool supply chain is only two years away from being completely broken; family run wool merchants are on the brink of collapse and when they do, the supply chain will be monopolised by one British company who are the largest buyers, producers, cleaners and sellers of continent of Europe (including Russia and Ukraine).
This monopolisation, if it happens, will cause further, disastrous collapses in raw wool prices.
They say miracles happen when we are desperate, magic happens when we are aligned.
The stone is out of the slingshot; miracle or magic, the giant is stumbling.
Hallelujah.
My deepest thanks to Blatnaid Gallagher for her time, energy and kindness.
Please visit the Galway Wool Co-Op website here and follow them on Instagram.
Below is a list of products which use Galway wool:
Rhyme Studio
Spiralis Eco-fiber Carpet or Tapestry in Green & Galway Wool
36 x 36”. Made in USA.
Irish Fibre Crafters
Unisex Aran Jumper from Galway Wool
Ladies Size M/ Men Size S. Made in Ireland.
Spirit and Luxury
Galway wool cushion cover
18 x 18”. Made in Ireland.
Dr Aoife Long is a fashion writer and a creative director at Spirit and Luxury.
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Thanks for reading.
I'm such a fan of what Blatnaid and the Galway Wool Co-op believes in and hope to integrate it into my work in some form at some point.
I am a hand weaver, passionate about using only native breed wool. I discovered Cushendale Mill's beautiful Galway wool a few years ago and weave what I call a Galway shawl. I look forward to reading more of your work. Lorna Shannon, weaver