Australia : Wool Producers Stretched By Current Prices

Fine wool producers are struggling to make money from the current prices as the eastern market indicator continued going down by 88 cents to finish on 862 cents a kilo clean.

Sheep and wool president Robert Pietsch says the damage to farmer's income from the poor prices will be compounded by the drought, which has made it difficult to produce good quality wool. "I would suggest the cream's gone out of it, there's no doubt about that. As far as the finer microns, especially the super fine microns where there's been a major increase in the amount of that wool available, those prices with 19 around about 1000 cents are really starting to get fairly difficult to produce at those sort of levels. I would suggest you'd have to question whether they are profitable at that level."