BRIGHT PROSPECTS FOR WOOL

Hauraki Plains Gazette, Volume VLI, Issue 3421, 18 December 1935, Page 6

BRIGHT PROSPECTS FOR WOOL

• -eGoing by results of the Auckland wool sale growers have reason to be satisfied with the present aspect of the market. The disposal of some 90 per cent, of the wool offered at the Auckland sale suggests not only a good demand but a willingness of growers to meet the market: the quality of the wool, too, has to be taken into account. Allowing for all this, the prospects of the New Zealand wool-selling season just opened may be regarded as very satisfactory. Boom prices were not paid for wool sold in Auckland, nor are such prices desirable, but the market opened with a healthy tone and at a full 2d per pound better than at the first sale held this time last year. One favourable factor in the situation is the great reduction in the quantity of wool carried over from last season. This unsold wool (in the grease) at June 30 was 164,400 bales. Sales by private treaty and shipments for sale on owners’ account have reduced, the 164,400 bales to probably under 100,000 bales. Precise figures are exceedingly difficult to obtain, but for four months ended October 31 last exports were 85,250 bales against 47,000 for the corresponding months of 1934, while sales of wool in New Zealand —before the Auckland sale —during the same period were 23,550 bales against 6140 bales for the four months of last year. The carry-over problem, then, is not so formidable as it once ’ appeared. This fact, and the present demand for wool and the inclination of growers to sell it, should justify the hope of improved returns to New Zealand from one of its principal exportable products.—Evening Post (Wellington).