BEING REDUCED

Evening Post, Volume CXL, Issue 63, 12 September 1945, Page 7

BEING REDUCED

PRICE OF CROSSBRED WOOL Rec. 9 a.m. BRADFORD, Sept. 10,

The price of certain crossbred wools will be reduced on November 1, it was officially announced. These reductions do not affect in any way the price to the Dominion grower or the price at which wool is available for export in any form, but apply only to that portion of the British manufacturers' wool ration which is used for goods actually consumed inside Britain. This last-mentioned wool price level has been subsidised by the British authorities in the interests of keeping down the domestic cost of living. The prices at which British manufacturers obtained their wool for the home civil trade have remained unchanged since November, 1940, so that when the

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alterati6ns take effect they will have been in force exactly five years, which is almost certainly a world record for wool price stability. The reductions range from lid to 2d in the clean scoured price per Ib, and combing types are as follows: —Fifties, carded from 26^d to 24£ d; forty-eights, average carded from 24^d to 22£ d; forty-eights, hogget, from 25;' dto 23£ d; and forty-fours, prepared, from 23d to 2ld.

In clothing type wools, New Zealand second pieces of 44/48 quality are reduced from 202d'to 19d; and New Zealand average crutchings of 44/48 quality, from 22Jd to 20£ d: There jire corresponding reductions in comparable types of British wool and in tops made from these wools.

No official explanation is given for these changes, but trade circles consider it improbable that the removal of war charges is responsible as this would be expected to affect the prices of all types and Merinos do not figure in the reductions. A more probable explanation is that this may represent an attempt to restore the normal commercial relationship of values as between one type of wool and another, which may have become somewhat distorted under war conditions.