As wool suppliers for 100+ renowned international brands — like icebreaker, , Hugo Boss, and Fjällräven — The New Zealand Merino Company’s goal is simple: produce top-quality wool without compromising on ethics and sustainability. The company’s wool meets the highest standards of animal welfare, environmental care, and social responsibility.
Demand for sustainable wool
The initial push for The New Zealand Merino Company’s (NZM) sustainability journey came from their customers, who wanted to reduce the environmental impact of their consumer products.
Over 50% of the emissions associated with wool production are on-farm emissions. This presents an opportunity for NZM to lower its environmental footprint while incentivising suppliers to protect and restore natural landscapes.
“The global fashion industry is responsible for 10% of annual greenhouse gas emissions worldwide and every step on the value chain contributes to that staggering statistic,” CEO, Angus Street, explains. “Wool is a 100% biodegradable natural fibre, but it gets a bad rap for its greenhouse gas footprint. Sheep, as part of their natural digestion of pasture, produce methane and traditional measurements focus solely on emissions – ignoring the CO2 removals also occurring on-farm.”
ZQRX: Demonstrating wool’s sustainability
Understanding the risks presented by carbon tunnel vision, The New Zealand Merino Company aimed for something larger, a regenerative platform benefiting their sustainable wool growers, brand partners and the world. Enter ZQRX, a comprehensive programme focused on advancing the sustainability of wool production through regenerative farming principles.
ZQRX is one of the first large-scale regenerative wool platforms, encompassing a holistic approach to farming that considers environmental, social, and animal welfare outcomes all underpinned by the goal of being better than yesterday, not as good as tomorrow. It goes beyond traditional sustainability standards by incorporating continuous improvement and measurable impact across 15 key performance indicators, including climate, land, biodiversity, animal welfare, and community well-being.ZQRX is committed to creating positive outcomes for the environment and the wool industry. Today, more than 500 farms across New Zealand, Australia, and South Africa, covering over 2 million hectares, are part of the ZQRX programme, with the support of 30+ global brand partners. ZQRX supports growers to measure and improve their environmental performance through partnerships with leading providers of real-time metrics and data-driven insights. Through these insights and partnerships, ZQRX enables growers to track their carbon emissions and sequestration, helping them make informed decisions about future carbon investments
How CarbonCrop helped make it possible
At the beginning of their sustainability journey, NZM investigated carbon sequestration utilising publicly available datasets but these lacked the granularity required to fully recognise and monetise carbon removals. The brands they were working with required a high level of integrity, and NZM’s existing solutions could not provide carbon unit tracing to meet these demands and support their farmers.
The New Zealand Merino Company have been working with CarbonCrop since April 2022, when they submitted their first farm into a carbon removal program. Partnering with CarbonCrop gave NZM the quality of data they needed to ensure end-to-end traceability of their carbon units, allowing their farmers to fully productise their nature-based carbon removals rather than simply modelling them.
CarbonCrop helps NZM manage its carbon program in a number of ways:
Measuring current and future sequestration CarbonCrop offers better, more informed decision-making for NZM and their growers by helping them understand what’s there and the potential for carbon removals in their grower network.
Carbon removal unit creation: CarbonCrop issues tokenised units with unique IDs and supporting metadata that can be traced back to source at any time.
Market application of removal units CarbonCrop structures the carbon program to preserve carbon sovereignty for the grower, supporting education around carbon removals and reinforcing market claims with data.
Tracking of sequestration and carbon removal units CarbonCrop makes the ‘bookkeeping’ and tracing of units easy and transparent across different carbon schemes or unit types and statuses.
Earning farmer trust CarbonCrop shows growers the true net position of their farm and how they can generate value from sequestration on their properties.
Results thanks to CarbonCrop
NZM have been able to report and offer brand partners access to reduced emission, net zero or net positive wool with confidence thanks to their partnership with CarbonCrop. This includes:
Understanding what’s there. CarbonCrop gave NZM confidence in their ability to generate enough removals from existing native forests and tell a compelling story to brands.
Generating brand support. The team is able to prove carbon impact to brands, building confidence and acceptance from these customers.
Grower prioritisation. CarbonCrop helped NZM prioritise which growers to engage with based on potential sequestration supply, then can work directly with their growers using the platform to identify key forest areas.
Combining data. NZM were able to combine CarbonCrop’s data with their own existing data to achieve more, allowing them to analyse far more than they could alone. For example, they were able to compare and contrast the opportunity of removals on farms supplying strong wool vs fine wool.
Why CarbonCrop?
NZM selected CarbonCrop as a partner for a number of reasons.
Our sequestration measurement tool and methodology gave the company the data they needed to have confidence in their climate action
Our scalable carbon removal unit solution ensured their carbon program was high-integrity and could grow over time
Having a wide network of landholders already connected to the CarbonCrop platform gave NZM confidence in our solution
NZM appreciated our forestry expertise and ETS experience
Our platform connectivity allows their team, their farmers, and even their forestry consultants (if desired) to work collaboratively from a single platform
Our track record of successful partnerships gave NZM confidence that we were the right partners
What it’s like working with the CarbonCrop team
“Working with the team from CarbonCrop has been great,” says Henry Tallott, The New Zealand Merino Company GM of Integrity Systems. “We looked at alternatives but Carbon Crop are the standout leader in this space. They’re a bunch of good humans that have inspired our trust and confidence. They step up, they’re positive, and they have a ‘can-do’ attitude. The team are also impressed by the CarbonCrop platform — both the data they can get from it and the visuals provided within.”
What’s next for The New Zealand Merino Company?
The company is committed to continuous improvement and going beyond sustainability. For The New Zealand Merino Company, supporting their farmers to protect and continue to regenerate their land— and providing the tools to measure their impact — is just the beginning.
The existing program with CarbonCrop is highly scalable, which gives the company confidence to expand into other regions, including Australia, in the coming years.
Put your carbon to work with CarbonCrop
At CarbonCrop, we don’t want carbon removals to give anyone a headache. We make it easy to measure, track, and monetise nature-based carbon removals throughout your supply chain, giving you the tools to report net-zero progress with confidence. Whether you’re working to meet climate targets or unlock new revenue streams, CarbonCrop helps you manage carbon removals at scale, delivering near real-time insights to support your sustainability goals.
Glossary
Carbon removal unit: A measurement representing one metric ton of carbon dioxide (CO2) permanently removed from the atmosphere and stored in forest biomass. In forestry projects, a carbon removal unit quantifies the additional CO2 sequestered through activities like reforestation, afforestation, or improved forest management. These units help track and verify the climate impact of forest-based carbon removal efforts.
Metadata: Information that describes other data. It helps organise, find, and understand data by providing details about its content, structure, and characteristics. In carbon credit registries, metadata is structured information that describes, explains, and provides context for carbon unit data. It can include details such as project type, location, verification status, and ownership. Acting as a detailed label for each piece of information within the registry, metadata makes the data easier to track and verify, supporting transparency and credibility in the carbon market.
Carbon sovereignty: The right of landowners, farmers, and businesses to control and make decisions about their carbon credits and sequestration activities. It involves understanding carbon entitlements, managing how credits are used or sold, and maintaining control over carbon rights. Carbon sovereignty empowers stakeholders to make informed choices about their carbon assets, maximising value while avoiding restrictive agreements.
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