A DRY winter and a rain-disrupted start to spring shearing in WA this season was reflected in Australian Wool Testing Authority (AWTA) data released two weeks ago.
In July and August AWTA tested 44,369 bales in WA compared to 46,337 in the same period of the 2016-17 season, a 4.2 per cent drop in bale numbers so far this season.
WA was the only State where fewer bales were tested in the first two months of the season compared to the same period last season.
Nationally AWTA has tested 263,266 bales this season, 13,034 bales or 5.2pc more than in the same period last season, with the biggest volumes – a combined total of 168,341 bales – split fairly evenly between New South Wales and Victoria.
Queensland recording a massive 42.4pc jump in the number of bales tested, but only to 9919 as that State’s wool industry recovers from prolonged drought.
A dry autumn saw some woolgrowers concerned about being able to hand-feed flock numbers swelled by two seasons of good wool prices and some culled lamb wethers and older stock early before shearing started.
As previously reported in Farm Weekly, heavy rains then spread over many days across the Great Southern and Central Wheatbelt in July disrupted many shearing schedules as they were just getting started.
But the data showed the pace had started to pick up last month, supporting wool broker claims new-season bales are beginning to flow into wool stores more consistently this month and woolgrowers, encouraged by high prices, are putting wool straight up for sale after shearing.
Last month AWTA tested samples from 29,567 bales at its Bibra Lake laboratory with the comparison gap to the previous August closing to 3.7pc.
Contractor Rob Cristinelli, who runs shearing teams out of Pingelly, confirmed rain was a “significant disruption” to the start of spring shearing.
“At one stage there, in a band through Brookton, Pingelly and out past Wandering, they had 14 days straight of rain,” Mr Cristinelli said.
“It has settled down though and our teams haven’t lost a day in the past three and a half weeks.
“Everyone is going at 100 miles an hour and wool is flowing into the wool stores again.”
The dry four months end to last season, in comparison to the excellent finish of the previous season, also showed up in the AWTA test results of WA wool so far this season.
Average yield eased slightly from 63pc in July and August last year to 62.8pc this year – going against a slight increase in national average yield to 64pc.
New season WA wool tested was slightly shorter at an average of 85.6 millimetres compared to 87mm last year and there was slightly more vegetable matter in this season’s fleece, according to AWTA.
On the positive side, the average WA wool fibre diameter of 19.8 micron and 52.1pc mid-break statistics remained similar to last season and the coefficient of variation in fibre diameter and amount of tip-break wool was slightly better so far this season.
Average staple strength of WA wool tested was also 2.7pc better.
Meanwhile, auction prices at the Western Wool Centre (WWC) continued their retreat last week from record highs of mid-August.
The Western Indicator finished last week on 1600 cents a kilogram clean, down 9c from the previous week and 80c below its August 17 all-time record.
It was 90c better than the South (Melbourne) Index, 28c behind the North (Sydney) Index and 44c better than the often-quoted Eastern Market Index.
The finer end of the market and poorer specification wools wore the biggest discounts.
In solid trading on the Wednesday at the WWC 19 micron wool hung onto a gain of 5c/kg as other wools started well but lost support and eased between 2c and 11c through the day.
By Thursday buyers had filled their quotas of 19 micron wool and it was generally most out of favour, dropping 37c.
“The majority of the selection was from 19.5 to 22.5 micron and these types were generally 10-20c easier,” said Australian Wool Exchange (AWEX) technical controller Andrew Rickwood in his WWC market summary after Thursday’s trading.
“A very limited selection of 19 micron and finer (wools) were 35 to 45c easier, with the lesser types most affected,” he said.
Despite softening demand and sliding prices, passed-in rates of 5.3pc on Wednesday and 4pc on Thursday were low, partly due to a small offering of 7512 bales.
An offering of 8196 bales is scheduled for this week.
AWEX figures on the number of bales offered so far this season reflect AWTA testing data for WA in suggesting a delayed start to spring shearing.
The number of bales offered at the WWC so far this season is down 2452 or 4.5pc – to 52,376 bales – on what was offered in the same period last season.
Nationally, the total number of bales offered across the three AWEX selling centres jumped 10.4pc.
Also indicative of a slow season start, the number of first-time offered bales is down 3048, or 5.9pc, on last season.
But with less first-time offered new-season wool available up until now, sale offerings have been supplemented by small lots of top quality wool drawn out of storage by the prospect of prices that are still very good despite last week’s retreat following a significant correction the week before.
While brokers have claimed for some months their wool stores have been cleaned out, some woolgrowers are quietly admitting to having kept some of last season’s exceptional wool back on the farm to be fed into the market when they consider prices to be “right”.
They ranged from 1533 to 1560c/kg greasy – 2127-2207c/kg clean – for 18 micron, 17.3 micron and 16.6 micron wools classed as MF4 and MF5.