Market Intelligence
Weekly Wool Market Commentary
Moses & Son is committed to providing our valued customers the most current information and data to empower your decision-making process. Discover our latest Australian wool market weekly update below, along with archived reports for your perusal and analysis.
2024-S01
The AWEX EMI closed on 1125c, down 17c at Auction sales in Australia this week. Being the first of the selling season for a new financial year, a noticeable change was the reduced offering of 34241 bales. Despite the markets price reduction this week the clearance rate still managed to achieve 91.8% which probably is a window into the poor market sentiment emerging from the wool pipeline. Over the past 4 weeks the EMI has dropped 45c, down from 1170c, reflecting the ongoing subdued discretionary spending at retail in our traditional markets where merino wool garments normally excel.
This week the currency exchange was largely unchanged and could not be sighted in the negative market result. One factor that could have had a slight negative price impact was that many Brokers would have announced their new Post Sale Charge schedules this week. In a year where the cost of doing business has escalated the increase were expected but realistically must be consumed and passed on by each stage in the pipeline. Despite this the three largest Chinese Top Makers were increasing their purchase percentage of the offering. Competing less aggressively was the large Australian Export Trading Houses who are reporting difficulties in negotiating new business at reasonable price levels.
Merino Fleece
Merino fleece saw the largest correction on Tuesday where the EMI fell 13c, with MPG falls between 3 to 38c across the Merino Fleece. A small selection of spinner types and MF4 lots with exceptional specifications avoided most of the market falls, Wednesday’s market seem to find some support on or above Tuesdays levels for the best style 18.5µ and coarser fleece lots. Unfortunately, once the orders were full the Merino fleece price levels continued to slowly erode towards the end of the day. The biggest loser for the week were 17.0,17.5 & 18.0 MPG’s which gave back 46-51c for the week. With this week’s falls in hand the 17 MPG fell to the lowest point since May 2020 and the 18 MPG the lowest point since October 20 highlighting the fragility of this market.
Merino Skirtings
Opened the week with good support for most types. The offering of the current seasons lots with 3% VM or less were well supported at last week’s price levels. This support carried through to the last hour of selling on Wednesday where some cracks started to appear on the 6% VM lots which resulted in some quotes depicting a price drop of up to 60c on isolated lots.
Merino Cardings
Traded in the same trend as the Crossbreds opening at last week’s price levels and closed the week in seller’s favour (just). Crossbred cardings have been slowly creeping up week after week and whilst still historically low for price they seem to be building momentum slowly.
Crossbred Fleece
Crossbred Oddments
Crossbreds
Combing lots opened the week largely unchanged from last week. Not only did this contradict the negative price sentiment projected at the end of last week the closing quotes on Wednesday indicated a slight strengthening in the 28 MPG and coarser.
Next Week
Market Commentary
The poor start to the 2024/25 wool selling season is certainly not ideal, however the old saying goes “whilst we are disappointed, we are not surprised” which I feel is demonstrated in the pleasing clearance rate. The significance of this year’s July sales, as many people may know, is that the selling roster has been altered with an extension of 2 more July selling weeks. This decision has been a work in progress for many years and hopefully will better reflect the receivals trends of more recent times. Compared to the same time last year the first two weeks of the selling season, this year, has managed to deliver a YTD reduction of 16.5% offered. ~ Marty Moses.