MiniJumbuk owner Don Wray living the quilt life in bush

Former shearer Don Wray doesn’t believe Australian manufacturing is dead or cannot be revived.

Don Wray on his Naracoorte property.

Former shearer Don Wray doesn’t believe Australian manufacturing is dead or cannot be revived.

He successfully runs a $30 million wool quilt-making company founded 40 years ago that is growing every year, employs 80 staff and now exports 30 per cent of its products to China.

Best of all, Mr Wray’s MiniJumbuk business — which started off making woolly lamb toys for Japanese tourists in the 1980s to take home as souvenirs — has proved that manufacturing doesn’t have to be based in a major city to survive and prosper.

The wool business he has built from scratch is in the small South Australian town of Naracoorte, 330km southeast of Adelaide, where MiniJumbuk and the local abattoir are the main employers.

It is a feat Mr Wray is enormously proud of: to have kept his wool manufacturing company in Australia and be turning a profit in an era when most other textile firms have quit local shores a decade or two ago and headed for China and cheaper labour.

“A lot of my friends (in manufacturing) shifted to China but since they did, they have lost control of their quality,” Mr Wray said.

“People are often amazed we do it all operating out of a country town but I say it’s just the opposite; if you have a quality brand and authentic product that people will pay for, the opportunities are really there for regional manufacturing.”

Mr Wray, who has just written a book about his life — from leaving school at 15 and working in a shearing shed, to running one of Australia’s biggest wool businesses — believes Naracoorte has more than rewarded his loyalty.

Many of his employees have been with the company making wool quilts for more than 20 years, giving the business experience, skills and a commitment to quality that is the envy of city manufacturers with more transient workforces.

The sheep and wool farming industry, too, has been a beneficiary of Naracoorte’s business success story. The quilts are filled with down wool from lambs and “meat” breeds of sheep that is much shorter and less lustrous than better-known fine wool Merino fleeces, but provides the quilts with their springy warmth and lightness.

Renewed demand for the coarse down wool — not normally strong or well-priced — has added another source of income for farmers producing sheep and lambs for their meat.

MiniJumbuk’s natural wool-filled doonas have most recently caught the attention of affluent Chinese consumers looking for quality Australian products, either buying as tourists or directly online.

Managing director Darren Turner said the factory is now producing a record 3000 wool quilts a week. “The cycle has turned; the world seems to want natural wool products and clothes now and we are in the right place,” Mr Turner said.