Increased demand for British Wool over the past year has led to a 135% rise in the average price paid to producers, with further improvements expected in next few years.

As a result, British Wool is making payments worth in excess of £8.4m to its members for the 2021 clip, which is an average of 36.4p per kg compared to 15.5p the previous year.

Furthermore, such is the demand for British Wool, that Andrew Hogley, CEO of British Wool, believes, there is potential for prices to double within the next year.

"We are in a far better place than we were at the start of the lockdown in 2020," he said.

"Consumers are becoming increasingly aware of provenance of product and are asking what their carpets and mattresses are made of. We now have 80 licencees looking to buy British Wool on a regular basis.

"Demand is also holding up from further afield, with our last sale on Tuesday, seeing 250,000tonnes sell to China. That's the most we have sold to China since the market collapsed three years ago," said Mr Hogley, adding that event also saw the largest volume traded at 1.4mkg.

This leaves British Wool with just 2mkg of the 2021 clip to sell before new season product comes on the market in July.

"We are in a far healthier position than we were at the start of the pandemic. Demand has returned for our product with improved auction prices over the past 12 months alongside a reduction in operational costs of up to £1.5m.”

Mr Hogley did however admit that the price is not yet where he would like it to be, but he remains confident it will improve with further price rises for the 2022 wool clip.

Returns for the 2021 clip will be around 40p per kg for many core grades, around 30p per kg for Blackface wool and around 15p per kg for Welsh and Swaledale. In all cases, this is a significant improvement on 2020 prices due to sales being badly affected by the pandemic.

Some speciality types such as Herdwick and Bluefaced Leicester will receive significantly higher returns. Herdwick wool will return 80p per kg, purely because it has a great story to tell and Bluefaced Leicester will return £5.50 per kg due to the quality. An additional £1.00 per kg is also being paid out on most types of organic certified wool.

“We recognise that our members have a choice to deliver wool to us. On the whole our returns are competitive relative to the prices offered by our competitors and in many cases significantly higher,” he said.

“However, unlike our competitors we don’t make a profit from wool. We sell on our members’ behalf and deduct the cost of marketing and processing. The more wool we have to sell, the lower our costs per kg and the better the returns are for all our members.”

The free haulage offer introduced in 2021 will continue this year, he added. “This means that members who take wool to any of our drop points will not be charged onward carriage.”

Other improvements introduced last year which will continue for 2022 include the lower threshold for the volume premium payment. Clips of 2000kg or more will continue to receive an additional 4p/kg with further incremental increases for those delivering larger volumes.

“British Wool’s primary aim is to maximise the value of wool for our members. Now more than ever, it is crucial that farmers work together and market their wool through British Wool so that together, we can maximise returns for this year’s clip and beyond,” Mr Hogley added.