Darfield woman Polly McGuckin has the rights to import the coffins from the UK, where they are hand-made and assembled in Yorkshire by Hainsworth, a specialist textile company with which her family has had a long association.
Three fleeces go into making each fully biodegradable coffin in the Natural Legacy range. The recycled cardboard frame is covered with thick felted wool and lined with organic cotton and it also boasts a wool pillow and blanket.
Describing them as "warm and cosy", the coffins had a softer appeal than their more traditional wooden counterparts, Mrs McGuckin said.
Mrs McGuckin, who shares her family's passion for the wool industry, set up Exquisite Wool Blankets two years ago.
Some of the wool supplied goes into making the John Atkinson blanket, a sub-brand of Hainsworth. The blankets have adorned the beds of royalty across Europe and the Middle East.
Mrs McGuckin brought the John Atkinson Harlequin range of blankets and throws to New Zealand. It was Hainsworth that suggested she look into intro- ducing the coffins to New Zealand.
Hainsworth provided the fabric for the uniforms worn by Prince William and Prince Harry at Prince William's wedding to Kate Middleton, and for Prince Charles when he wed Lady Diana Spencer.
It supplied the piano cloth for Steinway and Sons pianos, the seat of the Lord Speaker in the House of Lords in the UK is covered in Hainsworth cloth and, since 1815, the British Army has relied on Hainsworth fabric to clothe soldiers and officers.
Hainsworth cloth carries the Royal Warrant, supplying furnishing fabric to Queen Elizabeth. The company has supplied cloth for many blockbuster films including Titanic, Harry Potter and Mission Impossible 3.
With a history dating back more than 225 years, the company had survived recessions and depressions by being innovative and "one step ahead of everyone", Mrs McGuckin said.
Sales of the coffins in the UK were growing and they were also being sold in other overseas markets.
Mrs McGuckin was contacted earlier this year by Janette Eason-Savage who was inquiring about a wool coffin for her mother Jill Crampton-Eason who was to be buried in Nelson. The only one available was a display model. She asked to buy it.
Ms Eason-Savage told The New Zealand Herald that she wanted to send her mother off "in style" and her mother would have loved the coffin.
The burial created plenty of interest in the coffins. Mrs McGuckin contacted some funeral homes and discovered they were interested in putting wool coffins in their catalogues. Not wanting to sell them herself, she was now working with a North Island-based distributor.
Coffins were something new for her - "I didn't think I'd ever be dealing with the funeral industry" - but she was passionate about wool and delighted to see "a bit of a comeback" for natural products. She was full of praise for Prince Charles, who fronts the Campaign for Wool, a global campaign which aimed to meet the challenges facing the wool industry and to educate consumers about the benefits of wool and highlight its premium quality.
While British wool was used in the coffins, there was no reason "renowned" New Zealand wool could not be used, she said.
Asked the cost of the coffins, Mrs McGuckin said the price structure was still being worked on but they would be priced very competitively. "It's a luxury coffin but not top of the range."
She had a lot of people comment that the farming community would rather be buried in a wool coffin "than a wooden box".
"It's going to be an interesting thing to watch grow. I know it's a funny old subject but it's something that people do think about," she said.
