Bradford’s Bar to Longer Wool Season

Sun (Auckland), Volume III, Issue 856, 27 December 1929, Page 8

Bradford’s Bar to Longer Wool Season

LOSS OF £5,000,000 BLARING THE MARKET From Our Resident Reporter f- LiLI NOTO N, Today A loss to Now Zealand of approximately £5.000,000 is estimated to be the outcome of Bradford's refusal to extend the wool sales season at the request of the New Zealand Wool Committee. Up to the present demand has approached only 70 per cent- of the offerings and with big supplies of wool on hand prices are expected to be still easier before the season closes However, prominent men in the wool trade declare that prices can drop no further and that the market has reached bottom. "It is a great pity that the New Zealand Committee ever consulted Bradford at all,” said one leading wool man today. “We should have simply extended our selling season to include the months of May and June, thug bringing it to cover eight months of the year, and have restricted our offerings, reducing them by about 30 per cent. Our attitude should have been similar to that adopted in Aus*ralia. We should have told them that we have wool to sell and that the sales would be conducted on fixed dates. I think that 98 per cent, of the buyers w r ould have stayed for the extra sales. As it is we close on April 16 at Timaru. “One cannot help contrasting the attitude of Bradford with that of the British Woollen Association two years ago. At that time, when prices were high we were asked why we did not extend our sales; today', with Bradford bearing the market, we are refused an extension. The failure to extend the selling season will cost the country £5,000,000. From every point of view it looks as though the season will a bad one.”