Almost 20% of the 36,000 bales offered this week failed to meet grower reserves. We aren’t convinced that the money isn’t enough, more the fact that they haven’t been able to adjust quickly enough to the falling trend. That does allow another 6,000/7,000 bales in grower stocks to ease any shortfall in coming weeks. We are still 13% down on offered volume compared to the same period last year and just 38,000 bales to be offered next week. We expect a deterioration in the quality of the offering to occur quite quickly now. The staple break point is moving towards the middle and this tends to reduce the value of the wool. Processing performance can be significantly affected by a high middle break.

On a very positive note, we are aware of some reasonable rain events in western NSW and Queensland in some of the worst drought affected areas. We hope it fills in more broadly as some localised storms are on the radar for the next few days.