The first wool market back for the season opened strongly according to Landmark’s North West regional wool manager David Hart.
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The opening sales after the Christmas break saw price indicators across the board up between 50 and 80c/kg, thanks to continued support from Chinese buyers.
“The market has passed the last high of 2011 and it has stayed that way for quite some time – it hasn’t been a momentary blip,” Mr Hart said.
“Carding wools that have been performing amazingly well, continued to do well, staying in demand with prices around 1000c/kg for good clean, low VM [vegetable matter], quality types.”
Superfine wools in particular were making a comeback, but prices for the 19.5-22m range haven’t been as spectacular.
“But those wool types were coming off a much higher base than the superfines and tend to come from larger framed, heavy cutting sheep,” he said.
“The 19-21m range is where a large part of our wool comes from and much of it is coming from mixed farming areas.
“There are no real strong Merino wools anymore. Twenty years ago there were 23 and 24 micron Merinos around – now that’s come back to 20-21m – and the really strong Merino types have almost disappeared.”
Prices for crossbred wools haven’t been strong, due to a global oversupply in these types coming from New Zealand and the northern hemisphere. However, Mr Hart said considering the excellent sheep prices at the moment, the wool income from meat and crossbred breeds was not a priority.
At “Barrakee”, Mungidi, Noela and Ranald Warby and their son Scott made the move away from Merinos many years ago and now run a self replacing Dohne flock in conjunction with their cropping enterprise and also join some Dohne ewes to Kooli and Composite rams.
The Dohnes cut a couple of kilograms less than Merinos “but the lambs are worth so much more”, he said.
“The style in our Dohne wool is quite good,” Ranald Warby said. “We shore the ewes last October with seven months’ wool and made about $30/head for the wool off them.”