Friday, June 8, 2012

South Africa:African wool prices slightly softer at final sale

The final sale of the season saw the prices softening and the Cape Wools Merino indicator dropped 1.7% to close at R94.11/kg (clean). This is 2.3% up on the opening sale.

Although prices started declining over the last few weeks, this was one of the best seasons in decades for woolgrowers with prices reaching record levels and the indicator remaining above the R100/kg level for a large part of the season. The seasonal high was R105.15/kg, which was posted at the first sale in January.

Fine wools, however, had a rather disappointing season with prices for these types falling sharply following a large offering and weaker demand from Europe and the USA, the largest consumers of these types, as a result of the sovereign debt crisis.

Quality, long fleece wools were in keen demand at the sale and fetched good prices. Some finer types were also slightly dearer at this sale.

The rand has been volatile over the past two weeks. At this sale it was trading at R8.36 against the US dollar, which was down a marginal 0.3% compared with the average rate at the previous sale a fortnight ago. At R10.45 it was 1% stronger against the euro.

It was a fairly large sale with 12 424 bales on offer of which 94% was cleared. Major buyers were Standard Wool SA (5 711 bales), Lempriere SA (2 429 bales), Stucken & Co (1 440 bales) and Modiano SA (1 083 bales).

The average clean prices for the different categories good top-making (MF5), long fleeces were as follows: 18 microns were up 1.2% at R107.90/kg, 18,5 microns also gained 1.2% to R107.51/kg, 19 microns were down a marginal 0.1% at R106.10/kg, 19.5 microns dropped 0.3% to R102.81/kg, 20 microns shed 1.6% to close at R100.43/kg, 20.5 microns were down 0.6% at R100.48/kg, 21 microns dropped 2.4% to close at R99.8/kg, 21.5 microns were 0,4% dearer at R101.04/kg and 22 microns were 0.3% dearer to close at R100.85/kg.

The first sale of the new sale has been scheduled for 15 August.

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