Hopes rise for profit on sheep shearing

Gareth Jones, producer relations manager for the board, is normally based in Newtown, mid Wales, but visited the Great Yorkshire Show yesterday.

He said the first sale of this year's clip took place last week and prices remained good, at just over 112p a kilo overall. There had been fears that interest in British wool would fade when the warehouses were filling up again.

Only 42 per cent of the wool put up was sold, compared to clear-out sales months ago but Mr Jones said the dip was a regular seasonal phenomenon, related to holidays in the textiles business, and the price was a better measure of continued interest.

It was 88p just before Christmas and went up to 117p before dipping to 98.9p at the last sale of last year's clip.

That meant, said Mr Jones, that most farmers would get enough to cover the cost of shearing. Next year, they might even make a bit of profit.

The farmer's share of the price of a kilo of wool from a typical Dales Mule had risen to 65p over 2009-10. If prices seen since February held for the next year, the farmer share would go up to 95p.

Mr Jones said: "There now seems to be no reason to expect a drop. The market is better for us for all sorts of reasons. And I think farmers appreciate that one of the reasons they are able to benefit is because they have the board and the board has its own auctions."

He said the British clip had dropped from 44 million kilos to 29 million in 10 years. The board hoped for a revival of interest from younger farmers, on the back of better wool prices on top of more than a year of profits on meat. Scotland was already seeing a revival and Wales and England had stabilised.