Weekly Wool Report By Moses And son

The AWEX EMI closed the week on 1421c - up 1c at auction sales in Australia this week.

46,338 bales went under the hammer with 88.2% clearing to the trade.

Sydney, Melbourne and Fremantle regions offered on Tuesday and Wednesday, however Melbourne sales extended into Thursday.

The market opened slightly softer across all centres early in the week with some large locally based exporters quieter than normal.

Wednesday was the reversal of Tuesday’s trend as a wider range of buyers participated, led by the largest Australian trading exporters, with keen support by the large Chinese Top Makers and Chinese Indent buyers.

The EMI gave up 1c on Tuesday, gained 2c on Wednesday and held firm on Thursday.

Merino Fleece opened slightly weaker on Tuesday with the offering of Ultra-fine and Superfine lots well supported adding up to 5c, whilst the 18-21 MPG’s falling from 5-15c.

18 and finer continued to improve adding 10-17c to the MPG’s whilst the 18.5 and coarser recouped most of the losses of the previous day. Fleece wools with poor technical specifications and heavy VM were poorly supported.

Conversely, competition on the well specified NM lots in participating Certified Integrity Schemes provided substantial premiums to the average quotes.

Merino Skirtings opened parallel to their fleece counterparts. Ultra-Fine skirts that were well specified attracted keen competition, whilst the rest drifted from last week’s levels, closing slightly cheaper. Wednesday experienced a reversal of this trend, closing with some lots adding 25c for the day.

Crossbred combing wools tracked sideways with the well specified and classed lots clearing to the trade, whilst poorly classed or unclassed lots represented a large percentage of the passed in statistics.

Merino Cardings tracked in a narrow price band, easing early in the week and posting a small recovery to close out +1c for Sydney, -2c for Melbourne and -5c Fremantle.

Crossbred oddments measured little change.

Once again the limiting factor for the wool market was not demand but simply finance pressure created by logistic restrictions.

Interesting to note that wools purchased from Sydney can be dumped and shipped up to 2 weeks quicker than Melbourne, with the Melbourne Dumps reported as the source of the bottleneck.

Next week the national offering increases to 50,142 bales being offered in Sydney, Melbourne and Fremantle.

It is likely we will see another movement of little or no change despite the Russian invasion of the Ukraine overnight.

– Marty Moses