MORE than a quarter of the Merino fleece on offer at the Western Wool Centre (WWC) on the last trading day before Easter failed to sell.
The lack of buyer interest was despite the WWC and the Melbourne and Sydney Australian Wool Exchange (AWEX) live auction centres not selling this week because of the Easter and Anzac Day holidays.
According to brokers, with big volumes of tender, lower yielding, lesser specification wools on sale earlier at the Melbourne and Sydney centres because of the drought, buyers looking for better specification wools to average purchases across the three centres did not want to buy more poorer quality wools in Perth.
The high pass-in rate was also mentioned by AWEX technical controller at the WWC Andrew Rickwood in his market summary.
"Buyers were keen to secure quantity before the Easter recess, resulting in a fully firm market for all Merino microns," Mr Rickwood said.
"(But) there were many sellers unwilling to meet the market, resulting in nearly 26 per cent of the fleece being passed in," he said.
AWEX statistics show it was the highest fleece pass-in rate at the WWC since November 8 last year when 41pc of fleece failed to attract a bid or reach the reserve price the day after wool prices dropped about 70 cents per kilogram clean across the micron range.
A 25.8pc Merino fleece pass-in rate on Wednesday last week was almost matched by a 25.2pc pass-in rate for the small 135-bale crossbreeds fleece offering.
Merino skirtings, with a pass-in of 9.3pc, was the only section where the rate was relatively normal - given that the market was firm but not strong - and the overall pass-in rate for the day was 22.6pc with 3757 bales of a 4853-bale offering changing hands.
With the WWC trading a day earlier than usual last week because of the Easter break, prices on Tuesday generally eased slightly, with the finer end of the micron range less in favour than mid microns.
The Western Indicator (WI) lost 4c on Tuesday when the fleece pass-in rate was 13.3pc and the overall pass-in rate was just 12.9pc.
On the Wednesday the market regained all of the territory lost the previous day and in some instances added a cent or two.
The WI put on 5c on Wednesday to finish the week up 1c at 2065c/kg.
Next week live wool auctions return to normal at the WWC with sales on Wednesday and Thursday.
The combined offering for both days is expected to jump 950 bales compared to last week, to a total of 10,896 in a national offering of 46,638 bales.
