POLICE have made an arrest in a wool substitution racket that has rocked the industry.
Victorian Police yesterday arrested a 47-year-old Bacchus Marsh man in Spotswood and questioned him over the matter.
He was released and is expected to be charged on summons for theft and deception-related offences.
Police said a search warrant was executed at Laverton North where wool samples and documents were seized.
In October, The Weekly Times revealed that at least 18 bales of Australian wool, worth tens of thousands of dollars, had been seized at Chinese woollen mills in recent months after it was discovered they contained wool vastly different from that tested in Melbourne.
At the time, Victorian Police alleged the bales were tampered with somewhere between testing in Melbourne and being loaded for export at port, with high-value 19-21 micron wool worth $10/kg-$12/kg stolen and replaced with significantly lower-quality product, including black and coloured wool, worth just 20c/kg-50c/kg.
