A short piece on exporting in First Voice, the magazine of the Federation of Small Businesses tells me that there's a small company in Malvern called Burial Cloud that manufactures '100% environmentally friendly natural woven-wool coffins' that are also '100% produced and hand-crafted in Britain.' They claim to source 'organic, bio-dynamic and rare breed fleece where possible'.

I'm not sure what my wife's plans for me are after my ultimate demise but she has often said she'd prefer a 'low environmental impact' funeral when her own time comes. She's talked of cremation but the fact is that using cremation the way we normally do it takes a lot of energy to dispose of a body. Sky burial would probably upset the neighbours in rural Hertfordshire so probably wrapping your mortal remains in wool, having them placed in a hole and maybe planting a tree on top looks like a pretty good 'eco option'.

I've always favoured wool; my favourite suit is a high-twist wool suit from Italy...although I'm not sure where the sheep whose backs it came off actually lived. Not all wool is the same though. Years ago when I had the time to walk and climb regularly I made the mistake of buying a very cheap wool jumper that was made of Herdwick, a rare breed of sheep. Burial Cloud would have been welcome to this jumper but if they'd got their hands on it it they'd have a lot of my skin donated free with it. Those herdwicks were brought to the UK by norsemen in longboats and they probably used it for making sails; it's probably OK for carpets and insulating houses.

A few decades ago whilst working in New Zealand I marvelled at the fact you could buy wool sports-fleeces in the styles that we could then only buy manufactured in acrylic or nylon fleece for outdoor pursuits. At that time you'd have struggled to buy anything 'outdoorsy' in the UK that didn't make you look as though you'd spent the morning blasting birds out of the sky. Now the New Zealanders sell you high-end thermals made from fine merino wool for your ski-ing trips...if you made these garmets from herdwick wool you'd have no nipples left, but the merino wool is a delight.

Perhaps through necessity the New Zealanders have been great at finding markets for the raw materials they produce from their animal industries and adding value to them; they make the most of what they've got.

I saw the President of a pharmaceutical company once say 'if we maximize our assets we can't fail to be profitable'. By that he meant that if you take every single asset you've got and you make it work for you, by ensuring that for each asset you have it brings in even just slightly more than it costs to own it, then you'll be profitable. And that's true, you can do miraculous things in business by making the most of what you've got.

For us to do the same in the UK you've got to have good primary producers, a good processing industry, and the ability to connect to potential customers. Probably the solution to connecting all that up is a form of social media...

I wonder what role vets could play in making british sheep part of a marketing success story. Most vets don't see any sheep any more.