The Australian Wool Market finished the week 0.6 percent lower, on average, at sales in Sydney, Melbourne and Fremantle.
The AWEX EMI decreased by 3¢ (-0.4 percent), ending the week at 751¢/kg clean. It remained unchanged in the North and decreased by 7¢ (-0.9 percent) in the South, with their corresponding Regional Indicators finishing the week at 768¢ and 735¢ clean respectively.
The sale in Fremantle saw the Western Indicator decrease by 6¢ (-0.8 percent), finishing the week at 722¢/kg clean. The EMI is now 118¢ (18.1 percent) above the closing value at sales prior to Christmas.
65,127 bales were on offer (compared with 54,117 last week), of which 14.1 percent were passed in, comprised of 11.5 percent in Sydney, 14.3 percent in Melbourne and 16.1 percent in Fremantle. Pass-in rates for Merino fleece and skirtings were 16.0 percent and 13.1 percent respectively.
2,159 bales (3.2 percent) were withdrawn prior to sale and re-offered wools made up 14.5 percent of this week's offering. 18.8 percent of the Western offering was re-offered wools.
Members of the trade reported significant amounts of "old" wool being offered this week, some of it with Airflow results.
AWTA converted to LASERSCAN in July 2000 and its test results cannot be combined with those from Airflow and certified. There were also reports of moth contamination in some old samples, detracting from their appearance.
The US exchange rate decreased by 0.26¢on Monday when compared with the previous Thursday, followed by increases of 0.02¢ on Tuesday and 0.56¢ on Wednesday and a decrease of 0.14¢ on Thursday to close at 73.77¢, up 0.18¢ (0.2 percent) for the week.
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