Steve Fussell loves wool.

“I love the industry, I love the people in it, and I love the job.” 

For the new PGG Wrightson North Island Wool Sales Manager, that makes for plenty of good reasons to get out of bed in the morning.

Steve started his career at 17 sweeping the floor at Williams and Kettle in Napier.

“Although I was a townie growing up in Taradale, I always had agriculture and farming in the back of my mind and spent time with my uncle on his farm. I left school, attended EIT, and after completing the course was looking for work. Uncle Dennis told me to go and talk to the Williams and Kettle wool store as they were after seasonal workers. They took me on in November and told me I’d have a job until March, though in the end I never left,” he says.

“After I’d worked through every part of the wool store for approximately three years, Doug White, the GM for Williams and Kettle wool, who was very good to me, suggested I go to Massey, where I completed the Wool and Wool Technology course, graduating in 1993.”

A brief period as a wool classer followed. Then, with Williams and Kettle expanding Steve was shoulder tapped to go to Fielding, becoming a full-time wool rep on the road in Manawatu.

“We were a young, energetic team, sent there to build a new business, while having a lot of fun along the way,” Steve recalls.

By the time Williams and Kettle became part of PGG Wrightson, Steve had been out of the business for a couple of years. Manager Barry Chamberlain asked if he’d like to come back, and after the merger settled in Steve returned to Hawke’s Bay as wool rep for the region.

When Barry retired in 2015, Steve put his hand up to take on the role of North Island wool auctioneer, which he has done since.

“I watched Barry for a long time. He taught me a few things to get started, gave me a few pages, then a few more, then the day came I called the whole catalogue. I used to get nervous before a rugby game, but this was something else. I didn’t sleep the night before that first auction!

“The rhythm and speed of auctioning wool is like calling a horse race. I prepare for an auction by studying the catalogue a multitude of times and working out my calling rhythm. There’s an auctioneer on YouTube who I listen to, and I practice in the car. 

“In the auction room I pride myself on doing the best I can for our farmer clients, extracting as much as I can for their clip. When there’s less enthusiasm you need to know how to manage the tough times. Some auctions are a challenge, which is when relationships come into it. I always make sure I’m honest and upfront with the exporters. In some of the tougher sales, when you have that trust you can leverage the relationships.”

Checking out the wool at Timahanga Station. From left to right, David Alexander from the NZ Wool Testing Association, Steve Fussell, Allan Jones and Hawkes Bay wool rep Andy Anderson.

With previous North Island Wool Manager Allan Jones retiring at the end of 2023, Steve began taking over the role midway through last year.

“With the professionalism and enthusiasm that the North Island wool reps bring, they make this job easy. Being in the office a bit more rather than spending all my time out on the road has been a challenge, though I’m thoroughly enjoying the new role,” says Steve.

He’s retained a smaller client list, a core group of farmers who live close to his Central Hawke’s Bay home.

“I need to keep my feet on the ground and talk to farmers, and a lot of the farmers I’m continuing to work with have become good friends.”

Developing those relationships has been a career highlight for Steve.

Steve Fussell visiting one of our growers, inspecting their clip.

“With some farming families, from when I started working, they had little children running around. I’ve seen those children grow up and come back to work on the family farm.

“With their wool, to be able to offer a range of selling options and have them tell me they will do whatever I think best, and support whatever I think they should do, gives me great satisfaction.

“Sometimes it goes beyond wool. One the biggest things is sitting down with a farming family, asking my opinion as a trusted advisor on some of the big decisions they have in front of them. That’s very humbling.”

While his enthusiasm for the industry is matched by his optimism for the future of wool, Steve anticipates some form of amalgamation is likely in the future.

“When the business brought forward Wool Partners International (WPI) in the 2000s, the prospectus set an ambitious target. Even though we fell just short, it was still the biggest voluntary fundraising exercise in the history of New Zealand agriculture, in support of what would have been an entirely new sales and marketing model. Regardless of where we might be now if the that had come in ten years ago, sooner or later there will be some change. 

“With the clip so much smaller, and opportunities to grow business becoming harder and harder, greater collaboration at some point in the chain has to be the way forward,” Steve says.

Outside work Steve enjoys trading a few lambs and bulls on the lifestyle property he and wife Lisa have shared for the past five years. Lisa, who sells lifestyle and residential property around Waipukurau, has been a great support for Steve over the years: early starts and nights sitting in the office on the phone are always a challenge with a young family.  Along with their son and two daughters, the Fussells have recently added horses to their stock numbers and are enjoying trekking.