Wool Top Production In United Kingdom In Excess Of Targets

Wanganui Chronicle, 29 June 1948, Page 5

Wool Top Production In United Kingdom In Excess Of Targets

Recd. 7.5 p.m- London, June 28. It is officially announced that United Kingdom wool top production has reached a weekly average of 45,750,000, which is the highest rate since 1935 and is described by Government spokesmen as a very remarkable achievement. Even more remarkable is it that United Kingdom topmakers, by exporting 6,000,0001 b. weight during May, have already exceeded the monthly export target which the British Government asked the Industry to achieve bv the end of 1948 states the International Wool Secretariat Special News Service. Commenting qn these figures the President of the Board of Trade stated that, while top- export prospects are complicated by the high Merino wool prices now ruling, the continued high bate of export is expected.

Trading conditions in the Bradford market were rather more active this week, and although top purchases by individual firms were n3t larger they reached a substantial aggregate turnover.

Topmakers welcome Australian offerings of A.W.R C. wools as a useful aid to a still hungry market, for both Yorkshire and the Continent need much wool to carry machiners through to the time wh’en next season’s wools begin to arrive.

There is a big demand for spot wool here, largely from Continental houses, but Yorkshire firms have little or nothing to offer, as the stocks on hand are either already sold under contracts for tops or needed to keen machinery occupied in the coming months.

Britain’s vast rate of wool consumption in the past 12 months leaves her lightly stocked in Merino combing wools to face the next six months despite heavy Dominion market purchases in the season now closing, . Clothing type wools and medium and low crossbreds are in a somewhat different category, for the woollen trade carries fairly good stocks. The present Merino wool prices threaten the utility clothing price schedule, and Government spokesmen intimate that the schedule will be reviewed if the high wool prices persist. Meanwhile, the Merino combing wool demand continues unabated at a level authoritatively estimated to be 50 per cent- in excess of world production. As the Joint Organisation cannot continue indefinitely to bridge this gan from available supplies of types in insistent demand today, responsible trade opinion feels that a wider switch-over to crossbred use is necessary if the present volume of consumption is to be maintained. Greater attention to fine crossbreds is already in evidence here. All Job quotations are firm and unchanged compared with last week.