WOOL HAS SELDOM LOOKED BETTER

Press, 17 August 1979, Page 15

WOOL HAS SELDOM LOOKED BETTER

It looks as though there will be a notable showing of wool for the first Christchurch wool sale of the new season, which will be held next Friday.

After an extremely favourable growing season with no breaks in feed supplies, wools are extremely well grown, being sound and long in the staple and colour is good also. Only a little discolouration has been reported in the backs of some of the younger sheep, like twotooths and hoggets, stemming from rains earlier in the year. However, on the whole there in an absence of discolouration. The feature of pre-lamb shearing has been the increased weight of wool clipped per sheep compared with a year ago. There are reports of the weight of clips being up by some 20 to 28 per cent per head and the spokesman for one firm of brokers said this week that in the North Canterbury area in particular, the gain over last season was running close to a kilogram per sheep. Combined with the likelihood of good prices this should hopefully produce a very heppy result for growers. But it has to be remembered that these comparisons are being made with what was a very poor’ season for wool growth. While the gain over last season will tend to fall away with later shearing 'this season, it is expected that it will mean larger offerings at Christchurch sales this side of Christmas. The size of the offering for next week’s sale has been increased from 24,000 bales to 28,000 bales to cope with the larger quantity of wool available. The wools are drawn from Canterbury, Marlborough, the West Coast and Nelson. Corriedales and Halfbred wools predominate, but there is also a representative selection of crossbred wools from the plains, Kaikoura, the West Coast and Nelson. While there is optimism about the market outlook for finer wools as well as the coarser wools, Which

have opened so strongly, the weight of medium to strong Corriedale and Halfbred wools in this sale could have an influence on the market. It is also a crutching sale and crutchings and oddments form a significant part of the offering, but according to one estimate given this week for one of the larger catalogues a big percentage of the wool is fleece—in the particular catalogue it is 61 per cent. Apart from the good growing season leading to a heavier weight of wool coming forward and also generally good conditions favouring shearing, resulting in a better flow of wool into stores, some of the extra wool is also attributable to autumn and early winter shorn wools, which did not make the last sale in May, coming in on this occasion.

Like the new season’s pre-lamb shorn fleece the crutchings are also better grown and of better length, but in some of the belly wools there is a touch of mud.

While the extremely good feed conditions have meant that even the finer wools have tended to be a shade stronger, against what might be expected there are also some very high yielding wools included—even into the 90 per cent yield category. Many superlatives have been used to describe the wool in for next week’s sale.. Here are two — “the Corriedale wools are better than for years at this time of the year,” and “the offering is the best for a number of years as far as wool growth is concerned.” As has been the case in reecnt years the first Timaru sale of the season will again be held in Christchurch and it will be on Wednesday. At about 14.000 bales it will be the biggest Timaru offering at this time of the year for 10 years, It is 2000 bales up on a year ago. Most of this wool will be crossbred and will be drawn mainly from South and Mid-Canterbury, but include a larger than usual amount from North Otago. As with the wool from further north, the Timaru wools have opened up particularly well and are exceptionally well grown.