The country's biggest wool exporter New Zealand Wool Services International Ltd, is expecting wool prices to hold their ground going into the new wool selling season but much depended on the currency.

According to New Zealand Wool Services International general manager John Dawson, more than half of New Zealand's wool exports have gone to China and the new uses China is finding for carpet-style wool has lead to rise in coarse wool prices.

One of the most important factors that has been seen over the season has been the amount of coarser-type wools that traditionally went into the carpet end of the business, a lot of that wool is going into the Chinese top-making industry, which has not happened before, certainly not wools down to 38, 39-micron, which is witnessed this year.

Ten years ago wool carpets held a 70-80 percent share of the Australasian carpet market but that has dropped to 20-30 percent as wool is increasingly losing out to man-made fibres, solution-dyed nylon and that is purely a price thing