Listen: Sideways wool market and great lamb wool

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The Country's Jamie Mackay is joined by PGW's South Island wool procurement manager Rob Cochrane to discuss the New Zealand wool market this week.

Mackay acknowledges that the wool market has gone nowhere since November, Cochrane agrees stating that the market has maintained a sideways motion.

Unfortunately the volume of wool hitting stores has resulted in an increase of sales.

The poor-coloured wools and coarser wools are continuing to struggle with finding their place in the market.

Despite efforts to breed finer micron crossbred wool, there is still resistance in the market and Cochrane foresees this trend to continue.

Listen below:

Mackay reflects on past annual markets and sees that this year is a mirroring of the 2017/18 season, and this has seen the price of wool halved since the mini wool boom in 2015/16.

A contributing factor could be due to the rise in the cost of production and shearing which are impacting on the farmers' bottom line.

On a positive note, lamb's wool has been bucking the trend and continues to sell well despite colour issues from the rainy season.

Cochrane says lambs have continued to gain international interest with their finer micron and comb length.