EASTER played a major role in the wool market last week with the northern region sale held at Sydney Royal boosting public interest in the fibre, while the looming one-week Easter recess spurred on a positive price lift.
The Australian Wool Exchange (AWEX) Eastern Market Indicator (EMI) closed at 1106 cents a kilogram - its highest in 14 months.
This was a 12c/kg rise week-on-week and as much as 113c/kg on the same period last year.
Industry commentators anticipate the pre-Easter rise would result in a further market lift when sales resume next week.
Elders wool selling centres manager Simon Hogan, Melbourne, Victoria, said two major factors influenced the current wool market - the weaker Australian dollar and the ongoing strong demand for crossbreds and cardings.
"The stimulus and the activity in the wool market last week was due largely to the Australian dollar which was at a two-month low," Mr Hogan said.
And while the tale of two markets continues for wool - with exceptional demand maintaining the strength across crossbred and Merino carding types, but momentum continually difficult to find for Merino fleeces - it wasn't all bad news for combing wools, Mr Hogan said.
"The real positive for the market again last week was the strength in the crossbreds and cardings markets, so while the Merino combing wools weren't the star performers, the cardings and crossbreds prices insulate the Merino wools from major falls," he said.
Following the Easter recess, Mr Hogan tipped a lift in the market first week back given it closed on a positive note.
"After the first week of sales I expect the bale offering will decline as as the autumn shearing in the Riverina has been completed, and we will soon hit May/June when it's quieter," he said.
Mr Hogan said there was still some wool on hold which was predominantly fine wool.
"The supply of fine wool still continues to surprise, year on year there was more fine wool tested this March than last March, which is going to slow the recovery of the fine wool premium unfortunately" he said.
The Australian Wool Testing Authority reported a jump of 35 per cent more wool tested in NSW last month compared with March last year.
Mr Hogan said most wool coming from southern and southwest NSW at the moment were pastoral wools and were of reasonable quality and style.
"It's a different story, however, north of Dubbo where we are seeing a lot of drought affected wools out of northern NSW and central and western Queensland.
Australian Wool Network NSW state manager Mark Hedley, Goulburn, expected the EMI would stay above 1100c/kg following the Easter break.
However, he didn't foresee relief for the fine wool market anytime soon, while supply remains high.
"Wool over 19 micron is making about 1200c/kg clean and it is probably not too bad for those growers, but it's still fine wools that are doing it pretty tough and there is no relief in sight for them yet."
Mr Hedley said while it was drying off now and wool clips were showing more dust, there had been tremendous wool clips out of the Southern Tablelands, Southern Slopes and the Monaro.
He said the positive note the wool market closed on gave exporters the ability to do business over the recess, whereas, if it closed on a negative it would have been difficult to generate business.
There were 48,019 bales offered last week, up 6599 on the week prior, and only 3.9pc of the offering was passed in at auction.
Next week a forecasted 50,596 bales will be offered.
Fine sale for Fullerton
FULLERTON growers Paul and Lorna Vallely's woolclip was part of the $15 million worth of wool sold at the inaugural Sydney Royal Show wool auctions last week.
The sale allowed visitors to the annual city-meets-country event a rare insight into wool auction room trading.
There was just over 14,000 bales offered at the two-day sale, which achieved an average of $1300 a bale.
The Vallelys, "Cladymore", Fullerton near Bathurst, sold 15 bales of wool (of lower specification, their top end was sold in November).
Twelve of the bales were SustainaWool accredited fleece lines - the first such accredited bales to be sold by Australian Wool Network.
The best of the Vallely's clip sold at the Royal, which measured 16.2 micron and was SustainaWool accredited, sold for 1530c/kg (1080c/kg greasy) to New England Wool, and was 68mm in length.
