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.
2025-S35
The AWEX EMI closed the week on 1,716c up 23c at auction sales in Australia. The EMI defied the strengthening FOREX to add 19c to the EMI in USD term. The (double) positive result achieved at this week’s sale, flew in the face of the negative narrative surrounding the recess granted by the Australian Trade to accommodate the recognition of the importance of the Chinese New Year celebrations.
Whilst the concerns for the market were mainly aimed at the ability of exporters to finance the purchase of the 52,000-bale offering (the largest weekly offering in over 3 years), a presale withdrawal rate 3.1%, meant the offering was shaped back to 50,701 and the pass in rate of 4.1% reduced the total purchases to 48,598 bales. Whilst Sydney and Fremantle offered on Tuesday and Wednesday, Melbourne had to extend their selling week to Thursday to accommodate for the larger offering. The weekly sale total gross $88.73m (Ave $1825/bale) making a lot of wool producers happier than they have been for sometime.
Merino Fleece
The MPG’s rose gradually over all selling days, and competition was driven by the large Chinese processors competing aggressively with the Australian-based exporters. The competitive tension remained from the first lot offered to the fall of the final gavel on Thursday. The price gap continues to close on the low-strength (high CVH) fleece types. The coarse Merino lots also achieved incredible prices, with a 22.9-micron lot sold in the Moses & Son catalogue on Wednesday achieving 1408c greasy and 1931c clean.
Merino Skirtings
The market opened the week with some caution on lots containing medium to high VM with the rest of the offering following the upward trend of their fleece counterparts. Wednesday’s results were more encouraging on all VM types, and this trend continued into Thursday (in Melbourne).
Merino Cardings
Merino locks and better style and bulky crutchings and stains were the highlight of the market this week. The MC’s all rose by an average of 70c (7.5%) for the week with the northern region rising 72c after a slow start. Fun fact from all of the Merino Crutching's sold this week the average clean price was 1518c. To put some clarity around this number the average Northen 19 MPG for the 24-25 selling season was 1454c (expressed in clean). The dominant purchaser in this category secured 28.4% of the total carding offering.
Crossbred Fleece
Crossbred Oddments
Crossbreds
The XB MPG’s traded with more caution than the Merino sector. Whilst 28-30 MPG’s traded at the pre-recess levels the best specified 25-27 fleece lots attracted better competition and were slightly dearer as were the 30 and coarser lots.
Next Week
Next week the national offering falls back to 38,246 bales. Early market intel suggests a reasonable market this week, especially on the better style and well-specified lots. ~ Marty Moses
Graphs
Market Commentary
It would be extremely optimistic to expect this market to keep rising week on week. However, the indication from the December Wool Production Forecasting Committee projections that we would produce 244 MKG this season (now eight months in) is right on track to meet the lower expectations.
Whilst the price may be somewhat inflated by processors securing inventory to ride out the May to July period, where we historically see wool receipts diminish, I feel we may soon enter a period of price resistance as the post-Christmas purchases are now starting to be processed and will face consumers’ appetite for an increase in garment prices.
So, expect some price volatility to disrupt the straight-line upward market trajectory soon. Of course, I could be completely wrong.