Family-owned wool company Fox & Lillie are big believers in the industry as one of the nation's biggest wool traders and exporters.
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But at the recent International Wool Textile Organisation Congress in Adelaide, the Lillie family showcased one of their lesser known ventures, Yumbah Aquaculture.
Their mussels and oysters were on the menu, along with lamb chops at the Great Australian BBQ, and were well received.
The 1990s was the decade that nearly broke the wool industry, with the collapse of the reserve price scheme, but Fox & Lillie Rural managing director Jonathan Lillie recalls it was also when their family made a fortuitous decision to diversify.
"I had a friend who was a marine biologist in Tas, who took me to several commercial abalone farms. From there we bought a 60-tonne abalone farm and are now growing more than 800t a year," he said.
Yumbah Aquaculture, which was formed in 2008 by the Lillie family and several other shareholders, has grown into Australia's largest mussel and abalone growers, with farms in four states - SA, Vic, Tas and NSW.
They also produce large quantities of spat for other farms from their hatcheries.
"I always had a vision for a large multi-species aquaculture company, and we are well on the way," Mr Lillie said.
Wool and seafood may seem world's apart, but Mr Lillie says there are a few parallels, particularly using his experience marketing wool to the world to establish overseas markets for their seafood.
"We are an abalone feedlot, so there are lots of things that are not dissimilar to livestock. Our livestock are fish in tanks rather than sheep in a paddock," he said.
Although aquaculture is a thriving business, Mr Lillie says the family have not forgotten their wool roots, with their grandfather Cyril Lillie establishing Fox & Lillie in Melbourne with Rhys Fox more than 75 years ago.
The initial business was buying and exporting carding types of wool.
The company now buys and exports both greasy and processed wool, which is headed up by Mr Lillie's brother James, while Mr Lillie is the managing director of wool brokering business Fox & Lillie Rural, which began trading in 1999.
Fox & Lillie offers wool on behalf of its clients at auction in Melbourne, Sydney and Perth and private treaty. It also has a network of 15 stores in rural Vic and NSW, buying about 50,000 bales each year.
In 2006, Fox & Lillie invested, and established with a group of Chinese investors, a specialised open top factory in China, called OTCL.
Mr Lillie says Australian wool has a lot going for it as a natural fibre, especially its thermoregulation properties and comfort in next to skin wear, but some structural changes are needed to keep growers in the industry.
"We have to try and get wool more reliably-priced and more stably-priced," he said. "It is very difficult to do while we have an auction system the way it operates, but there are people starting to think about the same thing as us."
