Our Story

Sometimes it takes a little black sheep to leap outside of the barbed wire box. 

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All Melissa wanted was wool insulation for her bathroom reno in a 130 year-old building.  The builder said 'no can do'.  And yet a quick search of Google said there were loads of wool insulation products even if they were a bit pricey.  Turns out they weren't wool, and if they were they had to go half way around the world before they got back to Australia, clocking up shipping, overland transport costs and carbon emissions every step. Not only that they had chemical treatments that killed cats and took 100 litres of polluted effluent to process a single kilo.  Now because she worked at the local servo she spoke with sheep farmers every day.  The drought had caused a feed shortage, the live export ban was coming up and the emergency service levy had left many close to suicide.  Despite all this several offered her bales for free because they couldn't sell it - it was low-grade, cross-bred, coloured or black.  So all she had to do was find a way to clean it and get it ready for her walls.  Slap it in the washing machine?  Apparently no.  That started a journey of discovery that unlocked an incredible possibility that simultaneously saved black lambs, paid the farmers in the middle of a drought, reclaimed an industry for Australia, built three completely new products, founded a climate resilience fund, helped the housing crisis, saved energy and insulated one sorry looking bathroom.  She uncovered reams of research papers that proved something amazing could be done that had never been tried before.  Mix up three different technologies, each already proven, test them at the uni, perfect the recipes, and she almost had a solution so big it scared her.  That was until the federal and state governments both got behind her and said 'you go girl!'  And 'go' she did.  

 

Welcome to the world-wide revolution in sheep farming and bathroom renos.

Welcome to BlackBaa!