Pictured above: Jonathan Mountfort.
What began as a Creative Director’s curiosity has become a game changer for sustainable building materials. Autex Acoustics’ new Embrace wall system harnesses the climate-positive power of New Zealand wool and a regenerative supply chain to deliver a truly nature-positive solution.
In 2020, Autex Acoustics took an unexpected turn. After two decades working with recycled polyester, the company’s Creative Director Jonathan (Jono) Mountfort decided to explore what New Zealand wool could do for the building industry.
The result is Embrace, an acoustic wall system that combines a wool covering stretched over a timber frame. The adhesive-free system is designed for easy disassembly at end-of-life.
“We were looking to diversify to make sure we had something other than recycled polyester as a feedstock material,” says Jono.
The team conducted an exhaustive study of available fibres in Aotearoa New Zealand, and wool kept emerging as the top choice despite some uncertainties.
Jono says wool farming can be climate-positive or “quite a mess,” depending on how it’s done. But the abundance of locally produced fibre made it worth investigating.
What they discovered was game changing. The wool they sourced removes 8.6 kilograms of carbon from the atmosphere for every kilogram produced. This has earned Embrace NaturePositive+ certification from Global GreenTag.
The road trip that changed everything
In early 2024, when Jono took over the sustainability and technical departments, he found the team stuck waiting for data to complete a detailed report on the product’s environmental impact.
His solution? Hit the road with an environmental consultant.
“I said we know the farmer, we know the scourer, we know the guys doing the wool dying. Let’s go see them,” Jono recalls.
They started in Napier at the Awatoto wool scouring facility where raw wool gets cleaned. What they found challenged standard industry assumptions. The facility was using a third of the typical water usage and recovering valuable co-products like lanolin and creating sheep pellet fertiliser, all things that weren’t captured in standard environmental impact figures.
Then they drove to Otairi Station, a high-country sheep farm near Hunterville, where things got really interesting. The team spent days drilling soil samples, measuring water flows, counting bee populations and building a complete picture of the farm’s ecosystem.
Jono and his team discovered that high-country farming in New Zealand, with minimal fertiliser use and regenerative practices can deliver what he calls a “phenomenally nature positive product”.
“We firmly believe that materials by themselves are not the sustainable thing. It is the cycle that they live within that determines how they affect impacts or benefit the environment.”
Technical innovation was also important in the development of Embrace. Autex adapted carpet spinning and off-loom weaving processes to create a felt with built-in stretch that solves a major problem with natural fibres expanding and contracting due to humidity.
“With traditional woolen wall linings, you’ll come in in the morning and it will be one size and you’ll leave in the afternoon and there’ll be a gap between the panels.”
The built-in stretch takes up that movement, keeping the panels taut.
The sourcing strategy keeps the supply chain local. Autex Acoustics has bought the entire wool production from Otairi Station for this year and expects to expand to neighbouring farms soon.
The timber framing comes from Abodo, a New Zealand company that thermally modifies FSC, carbon negative, certified radiata pine from renewable plantations. The heat treatment process, which uses no chemicals or preservatives, delivers exceptional stability and longevity.
Global interest
Since launching in April 2025, Embrace has been installed in educational facilities and commercial offices, including the Warren and Mahoney-designed 6-star Green Star Tauranga City Council building.
There’s strong interest from the UK and California, with architects and designers keen for what Jono calls “a good news story versus everything else that’s slightly less bad.”
“The main feature is the environmental story. People are hanging out for something alternative.”
For Jono, Embrace is about proving what’s possible rather than just talking about it. With operations in New Zealand, Australia, the UK, and the USA, Autex is already taking lessons learned in Aotearoa New Zealand and scaling them globally.
Autex Acoustic is part of the Sustainable Business Network and is in the Next list of innovators, entrepreneurs, projects and organisations that were finalists in the 2025 Sustainable Business Awards. Jonathan Mounfort was a finalist for the Transformational Leadership award.
