China to pick up majority of SA wool

19 Aug '10

2 min read

At the onset of the wool season in Port Elizabeth, around 14,000 stockpiled wool bales will be auctioned and China is likely to seize a major chunk of the same.

China once again underpinned its status of being the biggest country-to-country trading partner of SA by importing 60 percent more unprocessed wool from SA during 2009-10 fiscal as over the preceding year.

As per the statistics released by Cape Wools SA, an industry association, for the 2009-10 season 57.5 percent of SA's wool exports in terms of value was accredited to China, which was 45.6 percent above previous season's exports. High wool prices during the previous season led to the rise in the value of SA's exports to China including that to Hong Kong, by around 35 percent to R 9575 million.

The Czech Republic accounted for 12.4 percent of the total export value or Rs.2058m and turned out to be the second biggest importer of wool from SA. The Czech Republic replaced Italy from its second position. Italy now stands third accounting for over 10 percent of exports from SA in terms of value.

According to the Cape Wools SA, the other major importers were India accounting for 9.8 percent, Germany with 3.4 percent, UK with 1.8 percent, France with 1.5 percent, South Korea and Mauritius with 1 percent each.

As revealed by the association's data, earnings from wool exports for 2009-10 season summed up to R 1.6 billion, which is 25 percent more than what was recorded during the previous season.

Fibre2fashion News Desk - India