WOOL PRICES STILL HIGHER: REPORTS REVIEWED

Gisborne Herald, Volume LXXVII, Issue 23154, 17 January 1950, Page 3

WOOL PRICES STILL HIGHER: REPORTS REVIEWED

Provisional estimates place the value of the wool sold at the first sale at Invercargill last week at £55 a bale, states the Wellington Evening Post. At Wanganui it was about £45 and at Wellington approximately £47. Reports from I-lomc are still encouraging.

Taking a line through those figures and estimating an average return for the season at the round figure of £oU a bale, the gross proceeds from flic current season's wool clip in New Zealand. assuming production remained steady at about 860,000 bales (actual sales last season amounted to 858.-75 bales at an average of £36), will be somewhere in the vicinity of £43,000.000. To achieve this desirable result it. will of course, be necessary for prices to be maintained at the current level, and while the market for wool, like any other staple commodity subject to the vagaries of supply and demand, is risky to forecast, conditions at the moment strengthen the suggestion that the present season will be the best on record. Depends on Manufacturers

There is a limit to which prices can go, but so long as the manufacturers abroad can turn over the products at an acceptable profit there is no reason why the present high prices should not hold. Reports from Home over the last few days are encouraging. Yorkshire reviews take an optimistic view of the future, and this optimism appears justified when one considers the 50 per cent. 1910 increase in the output of worsted jarn as compared with the last year of the war and the corresponding increase in wool cloth output which exceeded 50 per cent. According to Reuter, the high raw wool prices now ruling do not appear to be an obstacle to future wool textile business, as, unlike the previous period of peak values in 1921. there is no threat of a break in values. At that time there was a possibility of a price slump, as wool stocks were topheavy, but now stocks border on the ‘‘low’ ebb” category. Increasing Consumption

Moreover, world wool consumption runs ahead of production—in 1948-48 the quantity of wool consumed was estimated at some 2,000,000 bales greater than the amount grown—and expert marketing and effective propaganda have countered the threat ol competition from synthetic textiles. The Bradford tops market, always a good barometer, has shown a further advance, with superfine tops touching the unprecedented figure of 141 d, and medium crossbred quoted at 62d to 65d. , , Futures tops In the TJnitcci States and Belgium are said to be buoyant, indicating that the trade abroad does not anticipate any appreciable vanation in rates.