WOOL PRICES

Otago Daily Times, Issue 27510, 3 October 1950, Page 6

WOOL PRICES

Support For Pegging Unlikely

ENGLISH EXPERT'S VIEW PA AUCKLAND, Oct. 2. America’s plan for pegging wool prices had little chance of adoption, said Mr S. M. Whytehead, an English wool expert, who arrived by air here today. Mr Whytehead is public relations officer for the committee of the London wool brokers which handles Commonwealth wool at the London sales. He will spend five weeks in New Zealand visiting the committee's agents in Hastings, Wanganui, Timaru and Dunedin, and studying the Dominion’s woolgrowing industry at first hand.

Mr Whytehead said both Australia and the British trade opposed the United States plan to abolish wool auctions and sell to the buying countries on a quota basis. The Australian Minister or Commerce, Mr McEwen, had told the Commonwealth Ministers’ conference in London recently that Australia would not support the plan. Since Australia supplied much of the world’s merino wool—about two-thirds of her clip was merino—the American plan had little chance of adoption without her approval. The scheme was impracticable anyway, said Mr Whytehead. The wool types which suited one market were often of little or no use to another. With wool so scarce, who would decide which country would get its needs? The woolgrowers had had bad times in the past and should reap the benefits of the high prices today, he said. Prices for New Zealand crossbreds were likely to stay high, although some fall was possible.