The North Island’s independent wool brokers have made a successful transition to online trading this week by selling some of their wool on the Wool Online platform (www.woolonline.co.nz) rather than listing their entire catalogues at the traditional ‘open-cry’ auction held in Napier. While the market is still relatively low due to the on-going effects of Covid-19, the sale on Wednesday afternoon confirmed the platform is more than capable of handling larger quantities of wool offered by multiple brokers. A technical issue in the first few minutes of the sale resulted in it being reset and restarted, but thereafter the auction proceeded well with more than half a dozen of New Zealand’s major wool buyers purchasing Lots.
This week’s sale was the first time that independent wool brokers have utilised the system, breaking with over 150 years of open cry auction tradition. Wright Wool (Waipukarau), Kells Wool (Napier), and East Coast Wools (Gisborne) all listed catalogues of wool for sale, and despite the depressed market they were more than happy with the way the sale went. Group spokesperson Philippa Wright said:
“It was great to be able to finally make use of the platform. We’ve been watching Wool Online develop over the years, and have always thought that there’s a need for the industry to move toward more efficient selling. Yesterday’s sale demonstrated how simple and effective online sales could be, for everyone.”
