Shearing costs

The Sheep's Back to Mill Statistics Yearbook (PDF 1Mb) is updated annually and shows at $579 million in 2006-2007, the cost of wool harvesting is by far the single biggest sheep-to-mill cost for Australian Merino sheep producers. Furthermore, shearing costs are increasing much more quickly than the inflation rate, and pose a significant threat to the long term viability of the wool industry.

OH&S costs

A key justification for the AWI wool harvesting program has been the potential for reducing OH&S costs.

AWI has been working to understand of what types of injury have been occurring in the wool harvesting area in order to address issues associated with this injury through training and technical development projects.

Updated statistics are now available up to 2005/2006 via the full report (PDF 300KB) (see also resource column on right).

This is the third in the series of annual updates.

Key results

There were 420 reported injury claims in 2005/2006 with an estimate direct cost to workers compensation in that year of $9.6 million and over 20,259 days lost. Cost to industry in this year using a multiplier of 2:1 is $19 million down $4 million from the previous year.

While this is good news it has to be put into perspective. Shearing frequency rate per million hours worked is 89.5 for 2005/2006, all of agriculture 14 and all of industry 10. Shearers have seven times more injury claims than agriculture, forestry and fishing and ten more times than the Australian average.

Similarly to 2005- 2006 report, injuries have been further analysed into:

• Animal handling injuries only, primarily from sheep catch, tip and drag and wool removal.
  These account for at least 40 per cent of all shearing injuries (averaging 201 per annum) and 61 per cent of all costs ($ 7.13m per annum).
• Animal handling/handpiece combination injuries, primarily from handpiece injury involving animal movement or kicking. These account for at least 13 per cent of all shearing injuries (averaging 62 per annum) and 5 per cent of all costs ($ .54m per annum).
• Handpiece injuries, primarily traumatic events from lockup, or gradual injuries such as tendonitis.
  These account for at least 26 per cent of all shearing injuries (averaging 130 per annum) and 10 per cent of all costs ($ 1.13m per annum).

AWI has a number of programs and initiatives in place to try and address the costs and issues associated with catch and drag as well as handpiece lock up.