“Ordered Selling” Of Wool Urged

Press, Volume CVII, Issue 31385, 2 June 1967, Page 1

“Ordered Selling” Of Wool Urged

It was obvious that the auction system could not put the wool into the trade without lowering the floor price, said the general manager of the New Zealand Co-operative Wool Marketing Association, Ltd. (Mr T. C. Allen, of Auckland) yesterday.

Mr Allen was commenting on criticism last week by Mr F. J. McNeill, on behalf of a group of Christchurch woolbuyers, of his earlier suggestion that the floor price of wool should remain unchanged next season. “Mr McNeill says that I must be expecting a rise, which is, according to him, impossible unless something extraordinary occurs,” said Mr Allen. “The position is that my thoughts are channelled to resist a further fall below that already experienced. “I am fully aware of the implications of the increasing stockpile and appreciate that wool must be moved into the trade, with any stockpile being slowly whittled down. In order to relieve a difficult financial position. “It is obvious that the auction system cannot put wool into the trade without lowering the floor price.

“On the other hand, according to my information, growers are adamantly opposed to any lowering of the floor price and have even voted unanimously in two recent provincial meetings for a changed marketing system. “If wool is to be moved, even at some less in the initial stages, it is logical to realise that the- New Zealand Wool Commission selling by direct negotiation is the instrument through which this can be done, working in the interests of the growers. “I do not envisage any mil-lion-bale stockpile as Mr MeNeill suggests and feel that, intelligently controlled, an ordered selling is at this stage the only way to sell, in order to bring confidence back to the wool fibre and to avoid increased stockpiling. The money that Mr McNeill worries about would come from the type of selling I envisage.”