By Rob Cochrane
With the on-going Covid-19 pandemic affecting many South Island rural communities often severely recently, wool harvesting has also continued to be interrupted as some shearing contractors have been forced to scale down operations allowing staff to recover from illness before returning into the workplace.
Whilst many rural folk may have scoffed at suggestion that their communities would be affected to such an extent, when the virus first emerged in NZ a couple of years ago, attitudes have changed considerably with perhaps a little more tolerance nowadays towards delays and interruptions?
Unfortunately, in areas where full-wooled crossbred sheep have been forced to carry their fleeces longer than anticipated due to shearer shortages, not entirely due to the pandemic, wool quality has deteriorated with substantial yellowing evident when samples have been drawn from bales being readied for sale in broker stores.
Good growing conditions, whilst great for general carcass condition, also contributed to fleece yellowing. At time of writing the North Island wool auction of 24th March had just been concluded and of the approximately 11,000 bales offered in broker catalogues, approximately 32% had been passed-in from the auctioneers’ rostrum for failing to meet grower expectation.
The previous week a similar percentage of the approximately 8000 bales offered had also been passed-in at the South Island auction held in Christchurch. With such high passing rates, a direct reflection of weak global demand for the particular wool types on offer, the short-term outlook appears cloudy. As earlier eluded a large percentage of the wools recently catalogued have carried much higher degrees of discolouration than normal due to climatic conditions experienced across much of the country and the associated abundance of feed in many areas.
Many lines of otherwise well-grown crossbred fleece have also been further contaminated by vegetable matter, which was to be expected given excellent feed conditions, and have therefore proved a little slow to move. In normal circumstances (whatever that means nowadays!) wool exporters representing Chinese buying interests would be competing for many of the poorer colour wool types, however the obvious lack of demand from this sector has contributed to the relatively high pass-in rates this season.
The main bulk of crossbred lamb’s wool came forward for sale during the February through mid-March period with again a limited demand for wools measuring coarser than approximately 30.5 microns and distinctly less interest in those displaying a vegetable matter (vm) contamination reading of more than 0.1%.
Those of 29 to 30 microns with a vm reading of 0.0%, were the most sought after, provided of course they carried a very low y minus z (colour) measurement. Only limited quantities of mid-micron wool types have been offered at Christchurch wool auctions during the past few weeks and market demand limited to specific types mainly in the 26 micron and finer ranges with most interest directed toward those with good tensile strength, well prepared, and low vm.
