Wool floor price almost steady

Press, Volume CXI, Issue 32707, 9 September 1971, Page 2

Wool floor price almost steady

(New Zealand Press Association)

WELLINGTON, September 8. The average minimum price for wool for the new selling season is 46c a kilogram, or 20.87 c per lb. This is only fractionally less than last season’s floor level of 21c per lb.

The Wool Commission will continue to operate a flexible buying-in price for wool and will continue to supplement growers’ returns to bring them up to floor price levels. The'new arrangements are for the year beginning next Wednesday. The chairman of the Wool

Commission, Mr E. L. Greensmith, said this evening that the commission would continue, when various types of wool failed to reach the minimum prices, to pay to the growers a supplement up to the minimum price, or to purchase the wool. Any purchases made would be at prices up to but not exceeding the minimum price, and the commission would pay to growers as a supplement any

difference between the purchase prices and the minimum price.

Under this policy the commission would not have a fixed buying-in level, but would work on. a level that might vary up to the grower level of 46c a kilogram. It would, as in the past, continue to make only one supporting bid on any lot. Mr Greensmith said that the new target level of 46c represented a conversion to the nearest whole cent per kilogram of last season’s target average of 21c per lb. The effect was to reduce very slightly the target average for the new season. During the 1970-71 season the appraised clip average of auction-sold wools on the basis of the approved schedule of minimum prices had been 20.82 c per lb, and there had been a market average of 24.23 c per lb. Within the new target average some adjustments had been made in the light of market realisations, and these had the effect of slightly narrowing the range of prices between fine and strong wools.