The wool market on face value appears to continue its spiral downwards - a trend since mid-February.
However, many are saying this is not a fair representation of the market, with current supply mostly made up of low yielding drought affected wools, which impact on the indicators heavily. While good quality wools continue to draw strong buyer interest.
Regardless the AWEX Eastern Market Indicator lost four cents a kilogram on Wednesday and a further 3c/kg on Thursday to close off at 1936c/kg.
The difficulty for overseas mills is that low yielding wools (40 to 60 per cent), traditionally can be blended in with high yielding wools (65pc).
However, with those high yielding wools scarce, top makers struggle to make a blend commercially viable. While in relative terms the wool market is still very strong, a strong mutton market and dry conditions continues to put pressure on growers.
The national MLA mutton indicator is currently at 501c/kg, its highest point since September 2018, supply heading into winter, is a factor at play on this market as well, and we may see this climb higher.
On AuctionsPlus Wool this week, there was limited buyer interest with 52 bales selling across the week. The 15- and 17-micron fleece wool sold up to 1260c/kg and 1250c/kg (greasy) or 2066c/kg and 2076c/kg (clean).
While 18- and 20-micron fleece wool sold up to 1650c/kg and 1436c/kg (greasy) or 2298c/kg and 2192c/kg (clean). The top priced lot online was a line of 19-micron AAA Merino fleece, which had 0.2pc vegetable matter and yielded 76pc.
This line offered by Elders was branded BIMBIMBIE/PN and sold for 1700c/kg (greasy) or 2237c/kg (clean).
The crossbred market continues to garnish strong buyer support, online 27-micron wool sold up to 960c/kg (greasy) or 1287c/kg (clean).
Nationally there are 42,000 bales on offer.