Bank holiday Monday on the farm in Clitheroe, Lancashire, England.

What a nice way to end the summer with a visit to see how the farm were getting on this season, we are privileged to have direct access to a farm in Clitheroe, Lancashire where we collect wool from the local area under our DB Wools direct buying business.

We drove out to the top of the farm and shown the expanse of rolling hills that the sheep and cattle graze on, the farm have chosen their breed of cattle carefully (Belted Galloway), a native breed which eat molinia grass. This encourages the growth of heather, which in late summer creates a beautiful purple landscape across the moorland.

The area has been very fortunate this year with rainfall, meaning the ground was lush with pasture and no additional feed was required which helped reduce cost and environmental footprint.

They have been carrying on some tups the last few seasons which although required time and effort, saved them some money at the local market for breeding rams, they were satisfied with the results.

Wool had been coming in at similar rates to last season which is a good sign, with access in the group to our own wool scouring washing facility and selling directly to vertical carpet producers for the contract carpet sector, where carpets are enjoyed by Hotels, Casinos, Cruise ships and public spaces, we are always in the market with a fair price and prompt payment.

Wool market for strong wool is still low unfortunately looking over the last 10 year period, excess supply entering the unforeseen pandemic and also the pandemic putting a holt to new carpet contracts became a perfect storm for wool price drops, and there is a lack of Chinese demand for finer bred wool, since the reopening of the UK we have seen good demand for the residential carpet sector with many people spending money on the home rather than holidays, hence the reason for wool prices to be marginally better than pandemic levels, looking forward we do not expect much hope for prices to rise at the farm gate, we anticipate a reduction because demand for wool products will be hit by high global energy pricing and other inflationary costs throughout the price chain, before the wool reaches the end user, it has to be washed, spun, dyed and manufactured into Carpet, so there are several energy price increases to contend with.

We hope to touch base back at the farm in the new year.