STRONG WOOL POSITION

Dominion, Volume 29, Issue 99, 21 January 1936, Page 12

STRONG WOOL POSITION

General Supporting Factors

Wincheombe, Carson Ltd. reports:--The wool market has excellent prospects for the three months’ selling ahead which will conclude the busy selling period in Australia. After the March series auctions will be limited to the final catalogues in June. When the sales opened in September good cause for ontimism existed? but no person could then anticipate that demand would be so consistently maintained witli a remarkable absence of any decided variation in values. Japan particularly, also Yorkshire, has been the strongest factor in competition, but the Continent, despite much reduced Italian buying, has proved a muchstrengthened influence compared with last season. The revival in French orders has been decidedly ■welcome. Shipments of wool from Australia to France in 1932-33 totalled 435,505 bales, but last, season they were only 276,(M10 bales. Competition from that quarter is needed this season because a larger proportion of the Australian clip is shorter in length, finer in quality, and some of it shows more vegetable fault and dust than usual. The improvement in turnover at the French mills lias been mostly for internal trade. Slightly larger exports of tops have been made, but foreign sales of yarns and fabrics have continued to decrease.

The expansion in France’s home business "has been due to increased employment, more stable government, and the measures it has taken to employ men in national works. Some improvement has also been recorded in French tourist traffic, which is usually a decided contributor to the country’s revenue. In addition, the fall in wholesale prices in France which persisted for some years has been arrested, the level of them being about 2 per cent, higher last October than in July.

If wool had been rising while other commodities were stationary feelings of uncertainty regarding their maintenance would be felt, but during the past months world prices generally have been advancing, the long-needed upward movement in the world wheat values being the most generally cheering development. The process of reducing the world’s surplus stocks of raw materials and goods is gradually restoring confidence. Cheap money has encouraged enterprise, trade hap increased appreciably, and unless some unexpected development occurs that expansion appears likely to continue. The improvement in the wool market is therefore justified for general reasons, and iu the ease of merinos has the special support of the strong selling situation iu regard to supplies. When Ihe fact is considered that in 1932-33 3,0(X).070 bales were sold on Australian markets and the quantities available this season will lie over 309,000 bales less, that reduction alone is sufficient to cause an appreciable advance in rates from the depressed figures of that year.

Sydney Wool Averages

Average prices obtained in the Sydney wool market so far this season are as under :—

Week ended. Per bale. Per lb 1935. £ s. d. d. September 7 .... 10 IS 1 12.9 September 14 .. 17 0 7 13.0 September 28 . . 15 4 8 11.7 October 5 15 3 3 11.9 October 12 .... 15 14 5 12:3 October 19 .... 16 5 10 13.0 November 2 .... 15 19 4 12.7 November 9 16 19 9 13.7 November 10 ... 17 12 S 14.2 November 23 ... 18 7 7 14.7 November 30 ... 17 15 6 14.8 December 14 ... 17 12 3 14.5 December 21 ... 17 14 7 14.6 1930. January 11 .... IS 5 6 15.1