There are numerous shepherds in Brandenburg. According to the Office for Statistics, around 72,000 sheep were kept in Brandenburg in 2022. The problem: local sheep’s wool is difficult to market. Among other things, imported wool from abroad depresses prices. Shepherds in this country can’t even cover the cost of shearing with the wool they sell.

An average wool volume of four kilograms of wool per sheep results in an annual wool volume of 288,000 kilograms of wool for Brandenburg. To help local sheep farmers market their wool, the ILU launched the wool washing project in August 2023. As part of the project, a small wool washing plant is to be developed and tested as a model. The plant is intended to enable the unmixed washing of small batches with the lowest possible transport costs. This is because a cost factor to date has been the mandatory processing stages of the raw wool, which make it uncompetitive compared to other renewable or synthetic raw materials. A key problem here is the lack of wool washing facilities in Germany. The logistics for wool washing in Belgium or Austria, on the other hand, is neither cost-efficient nor environmentally friendly.

Those responsible for the project see the potential of small batches of different qualities of wool from Brandenburg sheep primarily in regional processing and marketing.

Customised textiles, home textiles or filling material can be used to create niche products that promise high added value.Through the cooperation of sheep breeders, plant manufacturers and scientific institutions, the task is to be solved as a model project and made available for subsequent use.The researchers are currently working on a catalogue of requirements for the development of the mobile wool washing plant.