FRENCH BUYING WOOL.

Auckland Star, Volume LVII, Issue 110, 11 May 1926, Page 4

FRENCH BUYING WOOL.

IN SPITE OF THE PKANC. CONTINENTAL DEMAND EQUALS UNITED KINGDOM. (From Our Special Correspondent.) LONDON, April S. While every day we wonder what the trap. 1 is coming to, wp note in a review of the recent won! sales in London the fact that Continental buying formed the backbone of the business done. It was believed that, conditions beini'. what they arc, France would be loss active in joining. Far from it, she was keener, showing that France can buy wool, no matter what the franc is at. The distribution of _.">7.000 bales .submitted at the London sales was as follows: — Cnti- AtneriHome liwitnl can Carried • I'll r- Pur- Pur- For<hases. chases, chases. warL Totals. Bales. Hales, Bales. Bales. Bales. " TO.OOO - G-.rHiO COW 41.000 138,500 2nd sFries— _ 45.0"0 Gu.OoO 4'jfiO 40.0 i O US, 300 Thus roughly 4S per cent was bought for the United Kingdom, 4S per cent for the Continent, and 4 per cent by U.S.A. It is pertinent to the part played by France in the purchase of raw material to know something; of how it is used, and a bulletin of the Wool Textile Delegation gives the result of an analysis of French trade in wool and wool textiles. Although post-war and pre-war figures arc not strictly comparable owing to changes in Alsace-Lorraine, the following points are emphasised by the figures: — (a) The fall in the quantity of wool bought by France through the United Kingdom, (b) the large proportion of direct purchases of wool from Australia, (c) the marked falling-off in the consumption, of wool from the Argentine, (d) the drop in French, exports of domestic "wools. The exports of textiles from France point to: —(a) The drop in 1925 as compared with 1924 in the exports of textiles from France (2-3,000 quintals, as against 277,000 in 1924); (b) a total export of cloths and stuffs from France to the United Kingdom in 1925 of 80.9 thousand metric quintals, as compared ■with 99.4 thousand in 1913; (c) the heavy fall in 1925 in the exports of "pure stuffs" from France to Germany (10.1 thousand quintals in 1925, as compared with 40.2 thousand in 1924).