Wool test numbers falling away in April with the end of autumn shearing, saw cumulative test numbers so far this season in Western Australia continue to slip further behind last season.
Australian Wool Testing Authority (AWTA) statistics for April show a fairly innocuous 2.4 per cent drop in WA bale test numbers to 33,108 for the month at its Bibra Lake laboratory and local woolstore test lines, when compared to April last year.
The national April-this-year to April-last-year comparison saw AWTA wool tests decline by 3.5pc to a total of 150,041 tests.
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In the biggest wool producing State, Victoria, April wool test numbers fell by 6.1pc compared to the previous April and in the second largest wool producing State, New South Wales, they fell by 7.9pc.
For the season so far - July to April - the number of wool tests conducted by AWTA in WA was down by 0.5pc to 323,412 when compared to the same period last season.
But in the same period, national wool test numbers increased overall by 2pc, compared to last season, to 1.61 million tests.
Season-so-far wool test numbers were up 3.1pc at the end of April in NSW, but down by 1pc in Victoria.
At the end of March, AWTA statistics had showed season-so-far wool test numbers in WA were just 0.3pc behind last season and at the end of February they had also been 0.5pc behind.
So far this season in WA, AWTA has only registered more cumulative wool tests than the corresponding periods last season at the end of July and the end of October.
While there have been several more positive monthly wool test totals in WA, big drops of 14.5pc and 11pc in wool tests respectively in August and December have skewed the cumulative season-so-far statistics into mostly negative territory.
At the end of April the average WA wool this season was slightly finer at 19.4 microns than the national average of 20.8 microns, was the same staple length of 89.3 millimetres as the national average and contained less vegetable matter, at 1.8pc compared to 2.3pc.
But the average WA wool staple strength at 30.6N/kt could not match the national average of 34.4N/kt and the average WA wool yield of 63.6pc fell behind the national average of 66.2pc.
According to AWTA, 61.7pc of WA's wool clip is classified as Superfine at 19.5 micron or less.Only half the national clip is classified as Superfine.
