Agriculture Minister David Carter is getting impatient over what he sees as a lack of action to save the wool industry, as yet more salvoes of abuse were exchanged and prices continued to tumble.
Mr Carter plans to meet wool sector leaders soon to express his impatience at a lack of progress and his fear that the impetus for change may have evaporated.
"I am becoming impatient that nothing has happened and the impetus appears to have gone," he told the Otago Daily Times.
While appreciating it was a difficult time given the state of world markets, Mr Carter said continued falling wool prices brought in to question the industry's viability.
In the meantime, antagonism continued between existing exporters and the new farmer-owned exporter Wool Partners International (WPI).
In a statement titled "Put up or shut up," Keith Cowan, the managing director of exporter H.
Dawson, accused farmer directors of WPI of spreading misinformation and making ill-informed comments that the market would pay more for wool than existing exporters were achieving.
Wool growers should not underestimate how tough the business was at present, with approved letters of credit not being honoured by banks and orders cancelled, he said.
For every order received, three clients were reneging on agreements.
Last week, one wool exporter was retrieving three containers from Turkey following non-payment, another had a container stuck on a wharf in India because a bank would not honour a letter of credit, a customer cancelled an order five minutes after it was placed with Mr Cowan, while another cancelled an order for 60 tonnes the day after placing it.
"It's tough."
"The fact farmers are getting some money for their wool is a bonus for them at this stage."
Asked why the perilous state of the industry had not encouraged an industry-wide solution, Mr Cowan said his company had met WPI chairwoman Theresa Gattung and chief executive Iain Abercrombie, but said offers by him to assist further had not been accepted.
"From H. Dawson's point of view, we have tried."
The Council of Wool Exporters was preparing a paper for Mr Carter on how it saw the state of the industry, he said.
But the concept of one entity controlling the total clip, as advocated by WPI, was not working elsewhere in the world.
Mr Cowan said Norway produced wool that was whiter than New Zealand's, of which 90% was sold by the Norway Wool Marketing Board.
Yet prices were lower than that received by New Zealand farmers.
"If this solution is going to work, then why is it not working for them?"
Meanwhile, WPI has recruited a former H. Dawson executive director, David Hammond, who takes up the position of European marketing manager.
Prices at last week's sale of 16,300 bales of wool in the North and South Island rose for the limited offering of better-styled wool but fell by up to 5% for average and poor-styled wool.
Wool Service International reports that prices for better-styled wool rose between 2.5% and 7%, long lamb's fleece by 3% to 6% and long oddments 4% to 8%.
But there were greater volumes of poorer wool offered which proved difficult to place.