FOR most in Western Australia's wool industry, 2020 will be remembered as a year marked by volatility, uncertainty and turmoil.
Although, amid that volatility, uncertainty and turmoil, there were some opportunities to profit.
But generally in 2020, a decision to sell - whether it was wool or sheep to be trucked east - was wisely made early for best return.
Opportunities, particularly with wool, did not hang about for long, often disappearing between one sale and the next and at best, from one week to the next.
Demand proved extremely volatile and at times elusive, so flexibility was a key asset in 2020.
COVID-19 played a major part in that, impacting initially on ease of moving wool or livestock across regional borders for two months and, longer-term, causing shipping and other supply-chain delays for greasy wool exports - which account for most of WA's wool production.
The pandemic impacted disastrously on global wool markets - effectively shutting down European and Indian options for local and national traders and severely limiting the volumes of greasy wool Chinese woollen mills needed to buy to keep machinery operating.
Because COVID-19 struck suddenly and part way through the northern hemisphere winter, most garment retailers across China and Europe were stuck with wool stock when customers were suddenly prevented from leaving home to shop by restrictions on movement, introduced to slow community spread of the virus.
Apart from retail demand for their products stopped dead during what should have been a most productive time, Chinese mills had other problems - movement restrictions initially prevented a workforce returning from annual new year holidays at the end of January and into February.
They also held stockpiles of greasy wool built up to get the mills through the Christmas and new year holiday shutdown in WA and then their own new year holiday celebrations.
By the time customers were allowed back into many northern hemisphere shopping malls, winter had gone, replaced by warming weather into spring and summer.
So, only once they had their workforce back and had cleared existing stockpiles, did Chinese mills begin buying greasy wool again - and then very cautiously.
Feedback from local and national wool traders dealing with China was that mills were operating at somewhere between 50 per cent and 75pc of capacity for the second half of the year because global markets for their finished products were still severely impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic.
Wool buyers operating at the Western Wool Centre (WWC) reported order specifications from Chinese mills had tightened - making averaging to achieve specification more difficult - and quantities had been slashed.
This became obvious with more volatile buying patterns observed at the WWC.
Australian Wool Exchange (AWEX) sale statistics show successive price movements in either direction for more than three sales in a row at the WWC were rare beyond April.
Buyers were prepared to bid up to a price point while woolgrowers and their brokers, on occasion, were prepared to adjust reserve prices downward to try to achieve a sale.
But more often than not in 2020, sellers and buyers had different views of the value of the wool on offer.
Repeatedly through the second half of the year at the WWC several buyers would bid against each other for wool lots with good specification, then all would drop out and the lot be passed in because bidding failed to reach the reserve price.
On August 4 - week six of the current wool season - 77.3pc of fleece wool offered at the WWC failed to sell - the worst passed-in rate not only for 2020, but for some years.
According to AWEX, the WWC's biggest weekly offering was 14,808 bales in the first week of March, week 36 of the previous season.
That was three weeks before COVID-19 emergency restrictions on travel between regions were introduced in WA.
At that stage, the city of Wuhan in Hubei Province, towards the geographical centre of China, was in lockdown as the epicentre of the pandemic in that country.
Most of China's textile industry is located near major ports along the coast in Guangdong, Zhejiang and Jiangsu provinces, so was relatively unaffected.
Woollen mills were buying wool to stockpile in case COVID-19 movement restrictions and lockdowns were extended to ports and in case access to credit became restricted, so there was some urgency to demand.
Two weeks prior - on February 20, week 34 of the previous season - the Western Indicator (WI), as a general guide to the strength of the local wool market, had hit its peak for the year at 1710 cents per kilogram greasy.
That week the spread across WWC micron price guides ranged from 1945c/kg for 18 micron fleece to 1805c/kg for 21 micron fleece, with Merino cardings bringing 1148c/kg - 20c off their high for the year two weeks before that.
From there, wool prices retreated relatively rapidly.
Although the local wool market did its best to struggle on, attempting to resist the worst impacts of COVID-19, it managed just two weekly offerings above 9000 bales in the second half of the year - one in October and one in November during spring shearing.
Live auctions were moved out of the WWC sale room into an expanded area adjacent to the Elders and the then Landmark - now Nutrien Ag Solutions - show floors in the AWH Pty Ltd woolstores complex at Bibra Lake which houses the WWC, so buyers could social distance.
Woolgrowers were no longer welcome to visit brokers' offices or show floors on trips to Perth and certainly were not welcome at the WWC to watch their 2020 clip sold.
Indeed, as late in the year as November, Dandaragan woolgrower and sheep breeder Peter Wilkinson, Challara stud, had to watch through the window from outside the WWC as the first clip sold under his and his wife Emma's name was auctioned.
The low points for prices and small offerings did not come until into the current season - early in the second half of the year and historically, not an unusual time for low prices and small offerings.
AWEX statistics show the WI crashed back below the 1000c/kg benchmark for the first time in seven years at a one-day sale on August 19, week eight of the current season.
On week nine there were no sales at the WWC because of a lack of wool ahead of spring shearings and the market bottomed out for the year in week 10 with a two-day sale on September 1-2.
The week 10 spread across WWC price guides ranged from 1139c/kg for 18 micron and 1048c/kg for 18.5 micron wools - the only wools to attract four-figure prices - to 871c/kg for 21 micron wools.
Merino cardings were down to 664c/kg.
The WI stopped its slide and turned around at 895c/kg, but it took another three weeks to climb back above 1000c/kg again, where it remained for the rest of the year.
At a one-day sale the following week - on September 7 during week 11 - the WWC put up its smallest offering for the year, just 3909 bales.
Department of Primary Industries and Regional Development research officer Kate Pritchett said WA wool receivals by brokers and dealers in the first nine months of 2020 reached 44 million kilograms, compared to 51.5mkg in 2019, a decline of 14pc year on year.
"This may be due to reduced prices following the COVID-19 pandemic as well as the large number of sheep turned off, reducing the number available to shear," Ms Pritchett said.
COVID-19 had a last hurdle to throw in front of the WA wool industry in the second half of the year.
Closed national borders and quarantine restrictions and costs for people entering WA made it either impossible or financially impractical for shearers from New Zealand or interstate to work in WA and help with spring shearing in 2020.
While generally not as badly affected as some Eastern States which rely more on visiting New Zealand shearers, some areas of WA, like inland from Dongara, were running more than a month behind with delayed shearings spilling over from 2020 into the new year, said WA Shearing Industry Association (WASIA) president Darren Spencer.
But in other areas shearing delays had mostly been kept to within a week or two, Mr Spencer said, by shearing teams being prepared to work seven days a week to keep up and woolgrowers being better organised for when teams arrived.
According to Dinninup Shearing Service contractor, Aaron Piper, shearing contractors in the Great Southern had also helped each other out by swapping shearers, wool classers and shed hands as required to make up extra shearing teams to get the job done.
But COVID-19 was not to blame for all of 2020's turmoil.
In late February the WWC became caught up in the aftermath of a ransomware cyber attack on AWEX's software supplier Talman.
Because of disruption to electronic systems, particularly digital publishing of wool catalogues prior to auctions, last season's scheduled week 35 sales were cancelled at the WWC and Melbourne and Sydney selling centres in an unprecedented move.
This prompted Australian Wool Innovation (AWI) chief executive officer Stuart McCullough, on an annual visit to Make Smoking History Wagin Woolorama a week later, to comment that the wool industry may never recoup the value of sales lost due to the combined impacts of COVID-19 and Talman selling system shutdown of wool auctions.
In April, the online auction final component of AWI's WoolQ digital platform and a similar online auction facility offering from AuctionsPlus were launched to take advantage of any further threats to AWEX's live auctions from either COVID-19 or cyber attack.
AWEX also successfully tested its own online auction system at the WWC using the Zoom platform in response to a request from the national Auction Selling Committee to ensure wool auctions could continue in one way or another.
Although announced in November 2019, the merger of local Landmark and Primaries of WA wool businesses under the Nutrien banner caused further movement within the wool industry as it began to take effect on the ground in June and July 2020.
It triggered a small 'shift' of staff moves to different companies before and after the final Primaries of WA wool catalogue was auctioned in early July.
Over its 39 years Primaries had grown from brash start-up to a leading WA wool brokerage and co-founder Des Sheedy and former manager Trevor Pedler joined staff at the WWC to watch veteran auctioneer Terry Winfield sell the 162-lot final catalogue.
The merger to create Nutrien also became the catalyst for Australian Wool Network (AWN), a leading east coast wool and livestock brokerage which already had a commercial wool connection in WA though Dyson Jones Wool Services, to enter the local market under its own name.
Effectively in July, the corporate identities of Landmark and Primaries disappeared from the WWC's list of selling brokers and new names - Nutrien as clearly the biggest broker and AWN as technically the newest - appeared on the list.
AWN appointed Greg Tilbrook as its WA wool manager and he was charged with setting up a State office headquarters, wool store and show floor in Bibra Lake in double quick time.
"It has really been a surprise packet for us as a start up," Mr Tilbrook said.
"We've only been selling wool for five months but as a 100pc Australian-owned company we've been really pleased with the level of support from the farming community - both with their wool and livestock business.
"Our wool catalogues have been good and the buyers have also supported us."
Turmoil created by the merger of existing brokerage companies and introduction of a new one, coupled with brokers moving between companies and taking clients with them, also created opportunities for others on the sidelines of the changes, like Westcoast Wool & Livestock.
"Our numbers (of bales sold) have been good, 2020 has been another growth year for us," said Westcoast director, broker and auctioneer Danny Ryan.
Despite the volatility, uncertainty and turmoil of 2020, it is likely many woolgrowers will have had a reasonable year once they have a chance to study the figures.
While wool prices and volumes produced continued their downward trends of the last couple of years, those declines were more than offset by strong meat and live sheep prices.
Better seasonal conditions and smaller flock numbers - due to1.8 million WA sheep going east last year - took pressure off finding feed for remaining flocks, with a consequent likely improvement in wool cut per head and lower incidence of staple mid-break benefits to come.
Some of the other events of the 2020 WA wool year that were largely overshadowed by COVID-19 were:
- Veteran WA wool trader Peter Scanlan and his wife Margaret from Scanlan Wools led 20 mostly WA woolgrowers on a 13-day tour of northern India and its wool processors in early January. It was believed to be the first tour of India organised for woolgrowers.
- Two attempts on the world solo eight-hour Merino ewe shearing record were scheduled for early 2020 in South family shearing sheds.
Concerns about sticky belly wool caused Josh 'Wah' Clayton, 35, to cancel his attempt in Duncan and Lomond South's shearing shed at Cowrabundie, but Bruce Rock shearer Ethan Harder, 20, went ahead with his in Adrian and Jacquie South's shearing shed at Cordering in February.
His valiant attempt missed the record by nine sheep.
- AWI, the Department of Primary Industries and Regional Development and WASIA among others combined resources to provide accredited shearing and wool handling training for young people at regional shearing hub camps held on farms at Northampton, Brookton and Wellstead during the year.
These were in addition to six of the eight shearing and wool handling schools - two were cancelled because of COVID-19 - fully funded by AWI and run each year at Rylington Park, Mayanup.
- The first new shearing shed in WA built to a modified AWI design that is likely to become an industry standard was completed at the end of October for Glenpadden Farms, Kojonup.
Geoff Bilney of Glenpadden Farms expects the modular six-stand, horseshoe-shaped flat-board shed will shave a full day's shearing off each week of the 42 weeks of the year it will be used.
The innovative design aims to minimise risk of injury to people and sheep.
