Merino wool market produces an up-lift

Flock of merino sheep close up

Keen competition for Merino fleece underpinned an 11¢ rise in the EMI to 1,139 ¢/kg clean this week. This encouraged sellers and resulted in good clearance with low pass-in rates across the auction centres.

There was solid support for this week’s designated Superfine sale in Sydney, which produced solid price rises across the MPG range (11 to 56 cents) as buyers chased fine, stylish, sound (>40Nktex) lots with low (<1%) VM. Well prepared Merino skirtings with low (<5%) VM and favourable strength (>30 N/ktex) gained 15 to 25 cents. Minor price movements occured in the crossbred sector with fault free lots unchanged in Sydney, however Melbourne had falls of 9 to 28 cents in its crossbred offering.

Locks gained ground while crutchings and stains were unchanged in a firm oddments sector for Sydney, however in Melbourne it was a different story. Merino locks with low (<2%) VM rose on Tuesday, but the sector weakened on Wednesday.

The national offering was slightly smaller (39,157 bales down 535 bales) with the national pass in rate nearly halving from last week (4.5%).

The crossbred and oddments sectors couldn’t maintain their recent momentum and trended lower.

This week on Mecardo Andrew Woods looked at the supply non-mulesed wool and also the main quality assurance schemes which are the conduit for demonstrating this change.

To squeeze value out of offering non-mulesed merino wool for sale, accreditation to a quality scheme is becoming a requirement as it evidenced by the sub-18 micron categories where half or more are accredited to a quality scheme. Meaningful volumes of non-mulesed and accredited wool remain a long way off for the major merino micron categories in Australia.

Next week

Next week 42,117 bales are currently rostered for sale with all three centres in action.

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Data sources: AWEX

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