The best result of the season for wool grower sellers occurred this week at the final Australian wool auction sales of the calendar year. All major indicators, in all currencies, closed out the first half of the season at the highest price points seen for the 2023/23 season. The strength of competition continued strongly from last week into this week and only grew exponentially as the sales progressed. Animated bidding is perhaps an understatement, as buyers representing mainly Chinese interest clashed heatedly, with only very minor support coming from other using nations. 

The lack of the usual European and Indian purchasing has been highly visible. Many of the better super fine Merino clips continue to be loaded onto vessels bound for China. Estimates of up to 25% less wool being bought for both Europe and India have been foreshadowed by the official ABS (Australian Bureau of Statistics) data of export destinations of Australian wool for the 3 months since July. With the lower prices on offer earlier in the season, this also places the value of those exports to Italy and India at more than  40% less Australian dollar value year to year in the same period.  

The only downside for the weeks extraordinary sale room activity was the slight reduction on the final day at Melbourne, which sold alone, and saw small retractions of 5 to 10ac from the highs of the preceding two days trade. Some incredible individual price gains were made during the week, with all Merino wools finer than 17.5 micron recording gains over 100ac, and much more when some individual lots are analysed. All other Merino wools were 30 to 50ac dearer for the week. Crossbreds managed a 5ac gain whilst the floundering carding sector put on 10 to 20ac.

Whilst the AUD values put on a very large 3% general gain for the week, the result in both USD and Chinese yuan was staggering. Both of the indicators shot up to be near 6% higher by the close of selling. This will be the basis of trade for basically the next month as sales are now in recess for three weeks. This price will be subject only to the ever seemingly unpredictable value of the AUD against those currencies which will be the only opportunity for price change to CIF values, and of course stock clearing and speculative trading.

Wool auction sales will resume in Australia in the week commencing 8th January 2024, where around 45 to 50,000 bales is expected to be offered.