WESTERN Australia's wool market initially raced ahead of Eastern States' markets last week, but then fell back, with finer micron segments mostly finishing just in front of advancing eastern prices.
But prices for mid-micron and broader wools at the Western Wool Centre (WWC) were overtaken during the second day's trading by prices for equivalent micron wools at Melbourne and Sydney auction centres.
Overall, the market generally firmed on the strength of good demand last week, helped no doubt by a significant reduction in the number of bales on offer, both nationally and at the WWC, following a string of unseasonably large auction offerings for the past several weeks.
The WWC's first-day offering last week of 3019 bales was its smallest in the previous seven trading weeks - excluding the Easter recess - in a period when daily offerings regularly exceeded 5000 bales and peaked three weeks ago at 5431, according to Australian Wool Exchange (AWEX) statistics.
On the second day 3773 bales were offered.
The end result for the week was WWC price increases of between 58 cents (for 18.5 micron fleece, taking its price to 1781c per kilogram clean) and 16c (for 20 micron fleece to 1351c/kg), with only two segments bucking that trend, according to AWEX.
The WWC's 21 micron price guide had a volatile ride, adding 14c the first trading day then shedding double that on the second, to finish 14c down at 1264c/kg for the week.
Much less volatile was the Merino cardings guide which remained steady the first day but shed 4c on the second to finish the week at 912c/kg.
As an overall guide to the strength of the market, the Western Indicator added 11c for the week to finish at 1361c/kg, compared to the benchmark Eastern Market Indicator which added 9c to 1315c/kg.
Some brokers mused that the softening market for 19-21 micron wools on the second trading day might have been different had buyers not previously appraised and rejected more than one in four of the fleece bales offered and almost one in five of the oddment bales offered.
On the first day, with a strong market, 18.8 per cent of the fleece offering was on its second or more trips through the auction room and the passed-in rate was 5.1pc, AWEX data showed.
On the second day, with a softish market and 28.2pc of the fleece being reoffered, the passed-in rate blew out to 17.1pc.
With 17.6pc of oddments reoffered on the first day, the oddments passed-in rate was 13.1pc, but when reofferings increased to 19.5pc on the second day, the oddments passed-in rate lifted to 14.5pc.
The overall WWC fleece reoffering of 23.8pc of bales last week was more than double the reoffer rate at the Melbourne selling centre and more than three times the reoffer rate at the Sydney centre, according to AWEX statistics.
Similarly, the WWC's oddments reoffering was more than double Melbourne's and more than triple Sydney's.
With this week and next week to go before the first of two scheduled auction-free weeks at the WWC before the end of the current Australian Wool Selling Program, the wool market is viewed as "unstable" by Australian Wool Network (AWN) WA wool manager Greg Tilbrook.
"There are so many unknowns - the COVID impact in India is a concern, but then India is also starting to do some business - it's (wool market) a hard one to pick at the moment," Mr Tilbrook said.
"The (prices) lift after Easter was really good, but a surprise for most (brokers) and since then the market has sort of tracked sideways with ups and downs.
"But looking big picture, demand is really good at the moment.
"The fundamentals of supply and demand are very good.
"We have a little bit of carryover supply from last year due to COVID, but demand is really good and we're hearing really good stories in regard to wool enquiry.
"We just have to manage supply onto the market to ensure we don't flood it with too much of what buyers aren't particularly looking for."
The recent trend of different wool buyers having contracts to fill and seeking different styled wools day to day, continued last week at the WWC.
Local trader Westcoast Wool & Livestock topped the first-day buyers list, ahead of national traders Techwool Trading and Endeavour Wool Exports and largest local trader PJ Morris Wools.
Chinese-controlled buyers, with the smallest Meliwa, followed by Lempriere Australia and then the largest Tianyu, filled the next three places.
On the second day Techwool was top of the buyers' list, with Meliwa and Lempriere promoted to second and third, Westcoast slipped to fourth, Morris to fifth and Endeavour Wools to sixth.
In the same week last year the WWC only traded on one day and offered 4382 bales.
The WWC offering this week is set to shrink by 194 bales to an early listing of 6598, but the national offering is set to jump 5171 bales to 47,028, with the Melbourne selling centre returning to trading three days to clear the volume.
In this week last year the WWC continued to trade on only one day and offered 4129 bales.
