Angwins buoyed by wool sale outcome

Wagin woolgrower Steve Angwin says last week’s wool auction delivered surprising results for his family’s Warranella wool clip.

Mr Angwin and his wife Tracey alongside three of their four sons — Dane, Kyle and Wade — run 6000 Poll Merinos at their 4000ha mixed-farming enterprise, with two additional leased properties.

Mr Angwin and Dane made the 230km trip from their Wagin farm to the Western Wool Centre at Bibra Lake last Wednesday.

This year, the Angwins produced 338 bales of wool off December shears.

Their 12-bale line of 1- micron fleece wool sold to a top of 1298¢/kg greasy, under the Landmark banner, on Wednesday last week.

It yielded 64 per cent and measured 90mm in length and had a strength of 29 Newtons per kilotex, all similar to another 11-bale line of 17-micron fleece wool that sold for 1289¢/kg greasy.

While confident their clip would attract a good price before the auction, Mr Angwin was buoyed by the result.

“We had aggressive reserve prices and were surprised by most fleece lines selling above those but we did have some passed-in lines,” he said.

The Angwins’ 15-line offering had seven of their 19 to 20-micron lots passed in which reflected in the WA wool market’s 18.6 per cent pass-in rate for the week.

Landmark wool agent Warren Holt said the Merino skirtings market was positive with finer lots keenly sought on day one and the sector consolidating on day two.

“The western market aligned with Melbourne on day one with losses between 9¢ and 31¢ across the Merino Price Guides,” he said.

“Day two saw gains of up to 16¢/kg across the Merino MPGs.”

The Angwins’ flock includes 3800 head mated to Nepowie blood rams, while the remainder are mated to Poll Dorset rams.

Mr Angwin said family had used Nepowie Polls since the stud began poll breeding in 1956.

More recently, Mr Angwin said he had selected his Nepowie rams off Australian Sheep Breeding Values, looking for higher fleece weight indicators and more easy-care types.

“We are constantly monitoring our flock through pregnancy testing and separating out the multiple-birth ewes from the singles into designated paddocks,” he said.

Last week, the Eastern Market Indicator dropped 33¢, or 2 per cent, to close the week at 1576¢/kg clean.

In US dollars, Australian Wool Innovation trade consultant Scott Carmody said the EMI fell again as the 0.6 per cent lower exchange rate helped depreciate that indicator by 2.6 per cent.

“The USD EMI moved down to a US1082¢/kg clean for the week, which was a US29¢ loss, but should help extract more interest from overseas users,” Mr Carmody said.