WOOL prices changes little this week, with a few more wool growers balking at current price levels at auctions around the country.

The Australian Wool Exchange said market continued in the trend experienced over last 18 months, recording minimal price movements across the selling series.

The resulted in a small negative movement for the week, 8.8 percent of the 38,426 bales (4793 more) being passed-in, up 2.9pc.

AWEX said the benchmark AWEX Eastern Market Indicator (EMI) dropped 3 cents on the first day of selling, then dropped another 2 cents on the second, finishing the week 5 cents lower at 1137 cents/kg clean.

“The last 14 daily movements in the EMI have been by 10 cents or less, 13 out of the 14 have been by 5 cents or less.

“Since the 24th of May 2023 until this week, the EMI has fluctuated between 1086 and 1220 cents, a range of 134 cents,” AWEX said.

“Despite the flatness of the market, the clearance rate continues to be high, as most sellers are prepared to accept the prices on offer.”

AWEX said high strength wool, typically wool measuring 40 NKT and above, continues to be in decline.

“In this selling series, there was 27.7pc of the fleece offering recording a strength of 40 NKT and above.”

Another highly sought after wool characteristic by exporters is a low mid-break in the position of break (POB) measurement, AWEX said.

“Wools possessing very low mid-breaks often have other faults overlooked as buyers need these lots to achieve their desired averages.

“In this sale, 54.4pc of Merino fleece wool had a mid-break of 50 or less,” AWEX said.

“Season-to-date there has been 33.3pc of mid-breaks 50 or less, this is 6.4pc lower than the corresponding sale of the previous season.”

AWEX said fleece wool carrying less than 1pc vegetable matter is another desirable characteristic.

“In this series, 61.4pc of the fleece offering was free of nearly free (FNF) of vegetable matter.”

Enough demand to maintain values – AWI

Australian Wool Innovation trade consultant Scott Carmody said there was little to no change on either price or sentiment in the auction market this week.

“The market is receiving just enough demand to largely maintain values, but not enough to ignite prices to stimulate better returns to sellers.

“This is particularly frustrating given the lower supply scenario that is being fed to the trade,” he said.

“Almost all types and descriptions on offer sold plus or minus 10ac/clean kg around the established quotations this week.

“Not one type area of the selection was favoured over another and buyers continually searched for opportune buy-in prices to complete batches or predict a future type at a price enquiry that could be executed profitably.”

Mr Carmody said benign week-to-week foreign exchange (forex) rate changes of the major trading currencies used in wool trading had little to no impact upon the wool markets.

“In fact, all of the forex differences recorded favoured neither overseas buyers nor local sellers, producing a flat forex, matching the rather bland auction scene.”

He said while the locally based traders and exporters topped the auction purchasing lists once again, perhaps the major positive to the week was the slow strengthening of the first stage processors direct buying at auction again.

“It was noticeable that these factories were wanting for others to lead the price setting, but as the week progressed, these operators seemed to have to up their ante a bit to ensure their minimum supply needs were being met.

“Elsewhere outside of Chinese buying interests, there remains the buying of the key Italian operators evident, but it appears their actions remain very much of a type selective nature and limited weights being required for the time being,” he said.

“Indian enquiry and purchasing at auction rooms is still in play and an important part of the competition at auction, but once again, sharp pricing for any volume purchasing is apparent.”

All three centres are in operation next week and there will be a touch 34,494 Australian-grown bales listed for sale. Fremantle will be selling on just Tuesday again due to low volumes, but Melbourne and Sydney will stick to their usual Tuesday/Wednesday rotation. Note that next week is a designated superfine sale series.

Sources – AWEX, AWI.