News

NCWSBA celebrated its Centenary on 20th February with 2 auctions and a reception. The NCWSBA Centenary Wool Auction was held at the Peter Calvo Auditorium of the Australian Institute of Music in King St, Melbourne. It was a great event with Melbourne buyers out in force to support and bid for the 200 lots on offer. We also had a large number of growers, broking staff, industry people and others observing the auction, both at the back of the auction floor and in the mezzanine viewing area. The…

The Australian Wool Production Forecasting Committee met on Wednesday, 20th November to review its forecast of shorn wool production for the 2019/20 season. The Committee decided to move its meeting forward from December given the continued dry and drought conditions across many of the major sheep and wool producing regions. The dry conditions have resulted in a larger decline in wool volumes tested and offered at auction than the Committee had previously expected. The Committee’s new forecast…

The National Council of Wool Selling Brokers of Australia today opened a wool broking industry historical display at the Sydney Wool Selling Centre in Yennora. The display celebrates the history of the wool broking industry in Australia and is a companion to the NCWSBA historical display in Melbourne. NCWSBA President John Colley opened the display, saying “The Australian wool industry is an iconic part of Australia’s history and its economy. Wool broking companies have been a vital part of…

Life is starting to return to ‘normal’ in China after the Covid-19 epidemic there. This ‘normal’ life includes mandated requirements to wear masks in public and in offices, no air conditioners and regular and constant temperature checking of everybody as they move around the cities. As well, mills are coming back into production. This is good news and hopefully will bring increased orders from mills keen for raw wool. However, elsewhere around the world we are seeing the opposite as cities,…

A Working Group of the National Auction Wool Selling Committee which meets daily at 8am AEDT to discuss developments and the situation with COVID-19 as it affects the Australian wool auctions. NASC has implemented recommendations from the Working Group in risk mitigation for the Sale rooms, including the location of sale rooms, personal and equipment hygiene, social distancing and restricting access to essential personnel from brokers, buyers and support staff. Specifically these include…

While wool prices have pulled back in the past few weeks, this is nothing on the decline in oil prices which dropped by 30% this week alone, driven lower both by the Covid-19 pandemic and a refusal by Russia to limit supplies. The plunge in oil prices has pushed prices below the low of January 2019, although oil prices remain well above the levels at the start of 2016. So far, prices for other commodities such as metals and food have not fallen much, although they have eased back. That may well…

The latest data from AWTA shows a sharp fall in the volume of wool tested in February compared with February 2019, for Australia and for each state. Overall, the weight of wool tested in Australia fell by 10.3% in February. For the 8 months of this season to February, the weight of wool tested was 5.7% lower than for the same period in 2018/19. There were some very large declines by state in February based on Wool Statistical Area data, led by a 32% drop in wool tested in Tasmania (albeit one…

AWEX has provided updated results on the average price differences paid in the 2019/20 season to the end of January for wool with the various mulesing statuses. The data shows that the average premiums paid for non-mulesed Merino wool at auction in the July 2019 to January 2020 period remained high. The highest statistically sound premium was paid for 16 micron wool at 99 cents/kg, but the premiums for wool from 20 micron and finer were all above 40 c/kg. The premiums for 17 and 18 micron wool…

The Covid-19 outbreak isn’t the only challenge that the wool textile industry in China is facing. The industry is also dealing with the impact of the additional 15% import tariffs imposed by the US on imports of wool apparel from China in September. After a sharp decline in imports of wool clothing from China by the US, this decline continued in October and November. The quantity of US imports of wool clothing from China slumped by 44% year-on-year in October and by a further 34% in November.…

At the start of February, AWTA released the data on wool tested in January. It shows that after the unexpected year-on-year 15% jump in December, the weight of wool tested was lower than year earlier levels in January. However, the year-on-year decline of 4.3% for the month was a much smaller decline than seen between July and September 2019. As a result, the weight of wool tested for the seven months July to January was 5% lower than for the same period in 2018/19. This year-on-year decline is…

The coronavirus outbreak, which started in Wuhan and has been declared a global health emergency by the World Health Organisation, dominated the Australian wool market this past week. The situation is changing rapidly and predicting what will happen from here is nigh on impossible. The number of cases is rising exponentially, and the global response is only now starting, including bans on flights to and from China by some airlines and by some countries. The only thing I think that anybody can…

The US and China signed the Phase One Trade Agreement on 15th January. Going through the text to see the impact this Phase One Agreement will have on wool reveals that the additional 15% import duty that was imposed in September on US imports of wool clothing from China remains in place. That means that, for example, US imports of wool sweaters from China has the regular import duty of 16% PLUS the additional 15% duty, a total of 31% added to the import cost of the sweater from China. One other…

More than 200 hundred people will come together this week to celebrate the centenary of the National Council of Wool Selling Brokers of Australia. The centenary will be marked by the NCWSBA Centenary Auction to be held on Thursday, 20th February 2020, which will be followed by a cocktail reception featuring a charity auction in support of the Michael Manion Wool Industry Foundation. President of the NCWSBA, John Colley, said “The Australian wool industry is an iconic part of Australia’s history…

At its meeting on 22nd August, the NCWSBA Board decided unanimously to support the call for the mandatory use of anaesthetic/analgesia when surgical mulesing is conducted. As is now well known, WoolProducers Australia and some state farming organisations have adopted a policy of seeking the mandatory use of pain-relief for surgical mulesing. This is being supported by Sheep Producers Australia. The Board of NCWSBA considered the results of a survey of its members which showed that the…

There is now a Wool Broker and Livestock Agents Online Training Course available to help prepare for if and when there is an outbreak of an Emergency Animal Disease in Australia, such as Foot and Mouth Disease. The course has been developed under the direction of WoolProducers Australia and SheepProducers Australia with funding from Animal Health Australia. The course is designed to inform and train wool and livestock selling agents about how to recognise and respond to a suspected Emergency…