COMMERCIAL.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XXXVIII, Issue 1547, 6 May 1916, Page 3

COMMERCIAL.

LONDON WOOL MARKET

The mail advices from London give details of the series of colonial wool 5a.... Partly owing to financial stringency and to fear of a labour shortage, and partly to renewed difficulties in obtaining permits for export, and the resultant restriction of outside competition, the extremely high level of the January sale was hardly maintained. In fact the prominent feature of the sale was the smallness of the foreign purchases, 77,000 bales out af the 85,000 sold being for Home consumption. This proportion is most unusual, even during the war, but even without the external competition some extraordinary prices were realised —42d for Sydney scoured, 41d for Port Phillip, and 4(U]-dfor Queensland. Crossbreds opened with a 5 per cent, decline. In the case of fine wools (in small supply this season) the drop was recovered, and they closed on a par with the previous series, but medium and coarse wools gave way further, and closed with about 10 per cent, below January rates. It is interesting to note that of the 102,089 bales of colonial wool catalogued at this sale, New Zealand supplied 56,287 bales, over a third of the total amount.