It was another week of mixed results for the Fremantle wool market with initial deflated pricing clawing back some ground by the close of sales, while the Eastern sales saw values fall without a reprieve.
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The Western Market Indicator saw an overall drop of 14 cents a kilogram to finish at 1273c/kg, while the Eastern Market Indicator (EMI) fell by a total of 18c/kg to realise 1134c/kg at the completion of business.
The first day of sales recorded the biggest losses nationally with the West conceding 15c/kg from the previous sale on the back of price reductions across all Merino types and descriptions.
Most notable were the losses of 15-35c/kg on the good specification types between the 18-21.5 micron range.
This also resulted in a pass-in rate of 16 per cent, with 3095 bales sold from the total offering of 3576.
Day two in Fremantle saw the fleece market steady and gain 1c/kg with broader types, 21 micron and above, attracting strong demand and coming into line with the Eastern states levels.
Westcoast Wool & Livestock auctioneer, Danny Ryan, said this week's results were not unusual as the market experiences this cycle and takes a bit of a breather. weeks.
"We go through this every four to five weeks," Mr Ryan said.
"But we have had a pretty reasonable month leading up to this though.
"This week it was mainly the finer fleece wools that were currently seasonally affected and gave a bit back.
"Medium to broad Merino's were relatively unchanged.
"Skirtings were dearer and the oddments were fairly firm."
The EMI saw losses both days but the trend was similar to the West with the first day recording the bigger falls.
The Australian dollar was stronger in terms of foreign exchange rates undermining returns more than regular buyers being less active.
Australian Wool Innovation said it was interesting to note the small improvement of 5c/kg in the US dollar for the WMI as this is largely a dominant Merino wool producing state, 98pc, and selling centre.
Nationally a total of 38,746 bales were offered, with 8157 from WA, while 34,854 sold overall, with 7094 of these from the West.
Next week has around 39,000 bales rostered to sell nationally, with Fremantle rostering about 7398 of this total.
Tamara Hooper
Journalist with Farm Weekly newspaper WA.
Journalist with Farm Weekly newspaper WA.
