BROKERS significantly increasing the volume of wool on offer at auction last week at the Western Wool Centre (WWC) did not appear to do woolgrower clients any great favours.
An extra 4022 bales put up at the WWC across both trading days saw buyers snatch back most of the price rises they had been prepared to pay the previous week.
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In the case of 18.5 micron Merino fleece and Merino cardings, buyers took back a little bit more than they had given with the previous week's price rises.
The 21 micron fleece segment was least affected, losing only five cents clean, but across the remaining fleece micron segments price falls ranged from 14c (18 micron) to 27c (19.5 micron).
As Australian Wool Exchange (AWEX) pointed out in its Weekly Wool Market Report, better type wools with good specification continued to attract buyer support and good prices.
But brokers and woolgrowers putting up average to poorer specification wools, in a forlorn hope of demand carry over from the previous week and buyers being prepared to overlook some wider variation in length and strength or colour and cot, met with resistance.
With a much bigger volume of wool available for buyers to choose from, they could afford to be picky and they were.
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The WWC fleece passed-in rate jumped from 4.7 per cent the previous week to 24.7pc last week and the Western Market Indicator shed 12c to finish at 1475c/kg clean.
In contrast to the WWC offering blow out, both the main Melbourne and Sydney wool selling centres trimmed last week's offerings considerably, with woolgrowers selling through Melbourne enjoying a firmer market and solid price rises across fine and mid micron segments, according to AWEX.
In Sydney demand was more patchy, with price rises for some fleece segments, but price slides there were only a fraction of those at the WWC.
The fleece passed-in rates in Melbourne and Sydney were 13.1pc and 8.7pc respectively.
Techwool Trading, PJ Morris Wools, Tianyu Wool and Endeavour Wool Exports jostled for the top three WWC buyers' list positions across both days.
This week the WWC offering is set to return to a more manageable 8293 bales, while the national offering will continue to shrink to 42,643 bales.
