COLONIAL WOOL SALES.

Gisborne Standard and Cook County Gazette, Volume III, Issue 413, 6 February 1890, Page 2

COLONIAL WOOL SALES.

THE increasing importance of the wool sales held in the colonies, and the presence thereat of Continental buyers, is causing alarm among the London brokers. The N.Z. Herald states that owing to the keen competition of trade tbe Continental buyers lidva considered ths question

whether by buying at the Australian wool sales and shipping direct to | Marseilles or to Antwerp, they could not save all the London brokerages and other charges to which they had been subjected, and thus be placed in a better position to compete with the British manufacturer. This has led to the advent of Continental buyers at the colonial wool sales. At the great wool sales at Melbourne, French, German, and Belgian buyers have lately been operating, and the result of this new departure is the complaint above referred to. It would seem that the wool shipments to Antwerp (which is the best distributing centre for the continent) have now attained such magnitude as to attract attention, and that there is considerable agitation in London, owing to the practical diversion of the wool trade thus occasioned. Two or three years ago the Chambers of Commerce, in the manufacturing centres of Belgium, took steps by the appointment of a representative who had visited all these colonies to open up a trade for Belgian goods and products, and to ascertain the advisability of Belgian wool-buyers operating in the colonial wool market at first hand. As far as we are concerned (says our contemporary) few if any of the Continental firms have been represented at the New Zealand wool sales ; so that the colony has not as yet felt the benefit of Continental competition except indirectly. Further information in relation to this wool business will be awaited with interest in tbe movement apparently now going on in London to manipulate the London wool sales in the interest of the London wool brokers and the English buyers.