“Sell In Grease At Local Sales”

Press, Volume CVI, Issue 31113, 16 July 1966, Page 10

“Sell In Grease At Local Sales”

“Generally speaking my advice to the New Zealand grower is to sell his wool in the greasy state and in the New Zealand auctions,” Mr D. L. Ambler, manager of Ackroyd Brothers (N.Z.), Ltd., told farmers from Oxford and Rangiora districts who attended a field day organised by Dalgety and New Zealand Loan, Ltd., in their Christchurch wool store last week.

Mr Ambler’s Ann are wool merchants and Mr Ambler prefaced his remarks by saying that his views were personal ones.

Speaking about the marketing of the New Zealand clip, Mr Ambler said he thought that the New Zealand farmer was in an enviable position in that he had complete freedom of choice regarding the selling of his wool. The majority sold at auction obviously because they had found by experience that this gave them

the best return, but they might, if they so wished, sell through a variety of different concerns, including members of the Wool Merchants’ Federation, the Wool Marketing Association, and a number of New Zealand scourer merchants and, of course, the London woolbrokers. There might be occasions when it might pay the grower to sell occasional lots through these various organisations said Mr Ambler, but it was his view that over all the highest return would probably be obtained by selling regularly through the New Zealand auctions. On private buying of wool, Mr Ambler said there was still a place for it and there were times between auctions when it was a useful source of supply, but it should be remembered that the buyer expected to obtain wool from private sources at a lower price than he was prepared to pay for similar wool at auction. Mr Ambler said that buyers preferred to obtain the bulk of their requirements through the auctions because the wool had'been well prepared by a large and experienced staff. Therefore the buyer, although he could only see a relatively small proportion of the wool he bought could be confident that what he did see, in fact, represented the whole line. This was more than ever necessary today when the buyer was required to guarantee 100 per cent to his customer not only the yield of the wool, but also the style and quality. Growers should remember, he said, that by whatever method they sold their wool and through whatever organisation, and whatever might be said to the contrary, the organisations concerned were all in the business primarily to make a profit for themselves, with the farmer’s welfare only a very secondaryconsideration.

Mr Ambler agreed with advice given earlier by Mr V. M. Collins, the firm’s wool manager, and published last week. He stressed the need for wool to be well skirted when it was being classed on the farm. From the buyers’ point of view he said that it was expected that all South Island wools would have been skirted in the shed and consequently they tended to pay a premium for these wools.

On the other hand in certain centres in the North Island only a small percentage of wools were skirted and i a consequence an automatic discount was made in the price.

He was also in favour of grouping small lots of wool providing that these wools had been originally well prepared in the shed and in the second place had been efficiently grouped by the selling brokers. Generally he said that the buyers preferred to buy reasonable sized lots.

Mr Ambler said he also agreed with remarks made by Mr Collins about the branding of wool packs. He said he wanted to stress the importance of clear and correct rebranding from the buyers’ point of view. They had had many cases of wools arriving at the customer’s mill overseas where the packs had so many brands on them, in such a variety of places, that it had been extremely difficult for the mill concerned to quickly identify the wool. It had to be realised that the main purpose of rebranding was quick and easy identification. Referring to the packing of bales, Mr Ambler said that frequently they had to move wool from one point to anothe r and as they were charged on the basis of so much a bale it was preferred that growers should keep the weights of their bales constant around the 3501 b mark for greasy wool and 2801 b for scoured wool. They should not be markedly lighter than this. On the other hand it was an advantage to a farmer not to put too much wool in his bales. When a buyer towards the end of a long day came across a heavily packed bale from which it was difficult to pull out a sample he tended to neglect this wool. Mr Ambler had some criticism to offer of the official and unofficial reports of wool sales published in newspapers. Of the official report issued by the brokers and buyers’ organisations in conjunction with the Wool Commission, Mr Ambler said that it was far too stereotype. In fact he said it would be possible for someone like himself to write the preamble to these reports for any sale that was going to take place at any centre in New Zealand during the next month. Almost every report said that Continental interests were the main buyers, America bought the bulk of the second-shear wools and Japan was interested in lines suitable for its requirements. These reports, he said, did not give a true impression as to just who were the principal purchasers of New Zealand For instance, the

United Kingdom which was one of the biggest single purchasers of wool in this country, was given little mention at all.

A point that should be stressed was that the majority of United Kingdom purchases consisted of the more average to inferior style wools’which would otherwise be seriously neglected, and it had to be remembered that this style of wool, particularly after Christmas, represented a large proportion of the offering. Continental houses, Eastern Europe and Japan tended to buy the better style wools and consequently dominated sales where these types of wool predominated. Perhaps this was partly the reason for the general impression given in many reports that these countries were New Zealand’s more important customers.

Mr Ambler said that wools from the West Coast of the South Island, because of the high rainfall in this region, tended to be cotted and discoloured., and were it not for the large quantities bought by British topmakers these wools would realise very much lower returns, as there were many countries which were quite incapable of processing them.

In many instances the unofficial reports in newspapers were grossly misleading. In many places he had the impression that they were written with a view to pleasing the farmers in the particular district where the sale was being held, and had been written by somebody with very little knowledge of what was going on at the sale. Wool was one of New Zealand’s major exports, he said, and widely read reports in the newspapers should therefore be as accurate as possible. (When invited to comment on reports of wool sales in “The Press,” Mr Ambler said he had no complaints about these or about the Rugby reports.) A member of his audience asked Mr Ambler whether in the case of a high-yielding second-shear wool he would be better off to scour it and sell it in the scoured state as he had been told that buyers, in general, did not assess the yield highly enough, and because of this the grower would be the loser when he sold in the grease. Mr Ambler, in reply, said that the remark had probably been made by a scourer who wished to obtain the business of scouring the grower’s wool, but he (Mr Ambler) could assure fanners that in this very competitive market buyers had to be able to assess the correct yield and in many cases guaranteed their yields 100 per cyit.