The 26 year old turning crossbred wool into home insulation

Kate McLeod grew up on a 4,000 stock unit property near Omakau, where the wool cheque went from paying for the farm to barely paying for the shearing. She trained as a structural engineer, spent three years specifying insulation for commercial builds, and kept running into the same gap: wool performs, but nobody had made it easy to buy at scale.

Tussock Insulation now presses batts from low micron crossbred clip that would otherwise be sold below the cost of shearing. The batts are R2.6, hit the same fire rating as the synthetics, and hold their performance when a wall gets damp, which fibreglass does not.

The hard part was never the product. It was getting a builder to change a habit twenty years old. Kate's advice to anyone else trying: get one merchant on your side, then let their order book do the arguing for you.