Supply Chain Costs

The objective of these pages is to build a knowledge base of current costs items within the wool pipeline/supply chain. 

The inital primary focus will be on those costs that are centred on the raw wool selling costs via auction - e.g. testing, auction, buying, shipping.

There are a number of publications detailing the costs in the pipeline, but few that describe actual costs as they vary considerably. The purpose of these pages is to describe one such sale lot. It can not suggested that it is representative of all trades.

Now these are costs for one buyer, for one client. For example, if the lot were destined for Europe then shipping costs woudl be higher. Equally if the terms of trade were different then the costs again would be higher reflecting any additional risk the buyer was exposed to.

It is considered that wool growers have a good handle on costs such as broker charges, shearing etc. Certainly I have been involved in many projects such as the 'sheeps back to mill' cost reporting, and AWEX reporting. However there is little published information on actual costs incurred by buyers, dumping, shipping, finance etc. for a single lot. Therefore we will concentrate on those costs.

To do this we will trace a single sale lot through the cycle. We will start in the middle - the auction! We have selected a single sale lot that we will follow post sale, and then go back to the pre-auction costs. 

The actual costs are not so much an issue as identifying the cost components, what are they and what opportunity there is to reduce, or avoid, these costs.

Costs also differ significantly between type of wool so we will 'follow' a fleece and  a skirting lot to show that difference.

  1. Fleece Lot
  2. Skirting Lot
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