FUTURE OF WOOL

Dominion, Volume 37, Issue 228, 23 June 1944, Page 4

FUTURE OF WOOL

Expected Demand Foi; Overseas Relief POST-WAR OUTLOOK (By Telegraph.—Press Assn.—Copyright) (Special Correspondent.) (Received June 22, 11 p.m.) LONDON, June 22. Wool consumption in Britain is at the highest level the available labour can handle. War requirements have first call on the production, and the balance is apportioned between home and export trade and the provision of wool goods for overseas relief as and when European territories are liberated. The authorities apparently anticipate an urgent demand for clothing from liberated Europe, and the British Government is buying surplus trade stocks of wool garments for overseas relief, and is also instituting the production of wool cloth and garments for the same purpose. It is officially disclosed by the Bradford people that occupied Europe would suffer an acute clothing shortage consequent on being denied access to Empire wool, in spite of extensive utilization of synthetic substitutes. Some observers wonder if the Continental wartime dependence on synthetics may permanently undermine the Continental demand . for wool, but the 'Bradford trade believes that the enforced wartime denial of wool to the Continental peoples will stimulate the demand for wool as never before when wool is again available to them. U.S. Misgivings.

Certain United States advices express misgivings at the long-term outlook for wool, consequent on wartime accumulations. The wool trade in Britain sees no cause for pessimism. Traders refuse to believe that wool accumulations will be allowed to depress post-war values to under an economic level and are confident that reasonable planning will devise a means of orderly liquidation of the accumulations alongside current production. It is emphasized in Bradford that » unofficial estimates of world wool accumulations are largely conjectural as the British Government, the largest wool owner in the world, has never yet announced the extent of its holdings. It was recently stated in Parliament that - public announcement of Britain’s holdings of various essential commodities were undesirable in the antional and war interests. The wool trade here says that against post-war wool accumulations must be set an unprecedented demand for wool from countries long deprived of wool and none can yet say how far the latter will balance-the former, as neither factor is yet precisely measurable.