THE WOOL SITUATION

Evening Post, Volume CXIV, Issue 19, 22 July 1932, Page 6

THE WOOL SITUATION

Nearly two'months will elapse before the resumption of wool sales in London, and sales will not be resumed in Sydney until 29th August. Meantime'there will be little to go upon, excepting the weekly reports of the Bradford tops market, to indicate the market value of wool for the 1932-33 season. Happily for' the crossbred-wool growers of New Zealand, the course pf the London market which closed on* Wednesday last was in their ; favour—not that improved prices realised for the wool can yet be said to be remunerative. However, there was an improvement of's per cent, to 10 per cent, in the value of wool constituting roughly 80 per cent, of that produced in New Zealand, and that fact, at least, should have a heartening effect on the pastoralist. Reviewing the reports of the London sales, it is apparent that British buyers made the market, taking 60,500 bales, and the Continent 38,500 bales, of the wool sold. Included in these purchases were 84,000 bales of Australian and New Zealand wools. Australia will resume its sales in Sydney, Melbourne, Geelong, and Brisbane with practically all newly-shorn wool, as the wool held over for the whole

Commonwealth is but 150,000 bales. New Zealand has a fairly large but at present unknown quantity of unsold wool on hand, but the local selling season will not open before the end of November next, and much may happen between now and then to improve, or to depress, the value of wool. Indications at the close of the London sales on Wednesday were that British buyers had about reached the limits of their immediate requirements, for* the sales closed with a quieter tone than that with which they opened; and although Continental support to the market was valuable, it did not betoken unbounded confidence in the future of values for woollen manufactures or even financial ability to seize the advantage of current low prices for the raw material. Still the fact that the London market closed at an advance, slight as it was, on the prices ruling at the sales in June- "hould. not be overlooked, and it justifies the hope at least of better prices than ihpse of last season for the New Zealand cljp of 1932-33.