The Press WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 21, 1966. Support For Wool

Press, Volume CVI, Issue 31248, 21 December 1966, Page 20

The Press WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 21, 1966. Support For Wool

The chairman of the Wool Board, Mr J. Acland, has done well to bring to the attention of fanners the vital role that the Wool Commission is playing in supporting the flagging market for crossbred wools —just as it supported a few years ago the market for finer wools. It is a pity that some of the opponents of a floor price scheme in Australia could not have been brought across the Tasman to attend recent sales to see the Wool Commission and the floor price scheme working in the wool marketing crisis. The commission has been able to take off the market wool that buyers do not want in the meantime at anything but give-away prices. On many occasions trade buyers have been prepared to take even crossbred wool at a fraction above the commission’s floor price bid although their initial offer was several pence below the floor price. The fundamental problem of wool marketing is how to limit the wide fluctuations in wool prices. These do no-one any good; and the wool marketing study group set up by the Wool Board and Wool Commission is looking into the problem. In a recent report the group says that wool buyers with whom they have conferred are of opinion that if the Wool Commission were to devise some method of setting a ceiling price as successfully as it has set a floor price this would be in the best interests of the trade. Here indeed is a remarkable tribute to the commission from a section of the trade that might be expected to resent such interference in the free flow of business. The Wool Commission has helped substantially to limit price fluctuations at the lower end of the scale; further progress might well have been made in this direction if Australia had adopted a similar floor price system.

At the moment it is crossbred wool that is in difficulty; and reports indicate that a main cause of its weakness is the availability of coarse wools in South America at well below New Zealand floor levels. This seems to underline the need for closer co-operation between New Zealand and South American wool producers in the interests of greater price stability. Already the representatives of the Australian, South African, and New Zealand Wool Boards have made preliminary overtures to South American countries, where organisations representative of growers are being set up. The difficulties of effecting any significant changes in a long-established marketing system should not be underestimated; but if floor and possibly ceiling prices gained wider acceptance in the wool markets of the world producers and consumers would benefit alike, and there need be no serious disruption of the trade.