MORE Australian wool growers passed in their wool at auctions this week as prices dropped after rising for the past three weeks.

Australian Wool Exchange senior market analyst Lionel Plunkett said the Australian wool market was unable to continue its upward path this series, with almost all sectors of the market recording losses.

“The Merino fleece sector suffered the largest losses, with the individual Micron Price Guides (MPGs) across the country falling by 20 to 95 cents.

“On the back of these losses, the AWEX Eastern Market indicator fell by 40 cents for the series, a loss of 3.9 percent,” he said.

“Due to currency movement, the losses when viewed in US dollar terms was slightly higher, a US30- cent drop, which equated to a 4.1pc reduction.

“The fall in price levels understandably pushed the passed-in rate higher and 17.8pc of the national offering failed to reach seller reserve, 15.2pc higher than the previous week,” he said.

“On a positive note, despite the losses of this week, after rising for the last three series, the EMI recorded a positive movement of 67 cents for the month.

“This was a monthly increase of 7.2pc, the largest monthly rise in the EMI since September last year.”

Mr Plunkett said the skirtings again followed a very similar path to the fleece, and all types and descriptions across all microns generally lost between 50 and 70 cents for the series.

“Although most crossbred MPGs fell for the week, the 26 micron MPG in the north was the only individual MPG to record positive movement, increasing by 10 cents.

“The oddments recorded mixed results, the Merino Carding Indicators (MC) lost ground in the south and west, but increased in the north,” Mr Plunkett reported.

The national offering increased to 31,022 bales this week, 7762 bales more than what was available in the previous week.

“Although this week’s offering was larger, compared to the previous season there has been 9549 fewer bales put through the auction system, a reduction of 2.9pc,” Mr Plunkett said.

More than 10pc of wool is re-offered

National Council of Wool Selling brokers of Australia executive director Chris Wilcox said wile demand, or lack of it, has been the focus for the industry in recent months, there have been significant developments on the supply side in Australia.

In his weekly newsletter he said more that 10pc of the wool offered this season to date is re-offered wool.

“These season-to-date figures compare with the statistics from last season to week 14: 334,705 bales offered and 270,255 bales sold.

“Of the bales offered, 11.4pc were re-offers last season to week 14,” he said.

“In other words, there has been a 2.6pc decline in the number of bales offered this season, but there have been 9726 bales (3.6pc) more sold this season than last season,” Mr Wilcox said.

“The pass-in rate this season-to-date is 13.9pc, compared with a pass-in rate of 19.3pc last season to week 14.

“This lower pass-in rate and higher total number of bales sold this season has been despite the average EMI this season of 986c/kg being 37pc lower than last season’s average to week 14 of 1555 c/kg.”

Next week’s national offering increases again. Currently, there are 34,450 bales on offer.

Click here to read the latest AWEX Micron Price Guides.