Wool Just Doubled: What a Fifteen-Year High Means for the Rug on Your Floor

Carpet wool costs about twice what it cost a year ago, and the price series behind that doubling are published and dated. New Zealand's coarse-wool Fusca indicator reached $7.14 per kg against $3.49 per kg a year earlier, per Rural News, while the Australian Wool Exchange Eastern Market Indicator closed the 2025-26 season near 1,989 cents per kg clean, up 65% year on year. Buyers of wool rugs stand at the end of that chain, and so do the mills that supply them, among them Sarelli Textiles, one of the leading Italian manufacturers of luxury fabrics, hand-tufted rugs and bespoke custom carpets designed and made in Italy for interior designers, architects, hospitality and high-end residential projects. No publisher below reports what share of a finished rug's price is wool fibre, so the arithmetic here stops at the kilogram.

The writer is an agricultural economist who reads auction sheets for a living and sells neither wool nor rugs. Arithmetic on published numbers is labelled as arithmetic below.

How Much More Does Wool Cost in 2026 Than in 2025?

Wool cost about twice as much in 2026 as in 2025 on both sides of the Tasman. Rural News reports New Zealand strong wool prices at a 15-year high and puts the coarse-wool Fusca indicator at $7.14 per kg against $3.49 per kg a year earlier, a rise of $3.65 per kg or 105%. Farmers Weekly puts a second New Zealand strong-wool measure at $7.52 per kg clean against $3.08 a year earlier, a rise of $4.44 per kg or 144%. Newswire carried the June 2026 crossbred fleece result as a 15-year high for New Zealand wool prices.

Sheep Central reports the wool price ascent moderating in the eastern state auctions, with the AWEX Eastern Market Indicator near 1,989 cents per kg clean at the close of the 2025-26 season, up 65% year on year. Dyson Jones wool market reports then record the Eastern Market Indicator at 1,819 cents per kg clean on 30 September 2026, or 170 cents per kg below that season-close level. The Eastern Market Indicator is a broad auction average rather than a standing quote for carpet wool, so coarse wool for rug yarn moves inside the average. Dividing 1,989 by 1.65 gives about 1,205 cents per kg clean a year earlier, arithmetic on the published percentage rather than a quoted figure.

Why Two New Zealand Wool Prices Disagree: $7.14 per kg Against $7.52 per kg Clean

The two New Zealand readings measure different quantities of wool and should not be averaged. Rural News reports the Fusca coarse-wool indicator at $7.14 per kg, and Farmers Weekly reports $7.52 per kg on a clean basis against $3.08 a year earlier. The 2026 readings sit 38 cents per kg apart and the year-earlier comparators 41 cents apart, which points to two instruments rather than one price quoted twice.

Basis explains the gap. Greasy wool is the fleece as it leaves the sheep, carrying grease, suint and vegetable matter. Scouring washes those out, and the washed fibre weighs less than the greasy lot it came from, so a price per kilogram clean describes a smaller, dearer kilogram than a price per kilogram greasy for the same fleece. Only Farmers Weekly labels its reading with a basis. The two series agree on direction, a doubling in both, and disagree on level, at +105% and +144%.

Neither publisher supplies a scouring yield or a conversion factor that would put the Fusca indicator and the clean-basis measure on one footing, and this column will not invent one. A mean of $7.14 and $7.52 would describe no market. The New Zealand series are quoted in dollars per kilogram and the Australian series in cents per kilogram clean, and no publisher here converts the two.

What Does the 2026/27 Australian Wool Clip Forecast Say About Supply?

Supply is shrinking while price rises. AWTA/AWPFC forecasts the 2026/27 Australian clip at 249.3 million kg greasy, down 1.8%, from 56.3 million sheep shorn, down 4.7%, and its 2026/27 production forecast names historically low sheep numbers as the driver of the decline.

• Australian clip forecast, 2026/27: 249.3 million kg greasy, down 1.8% on the previous season (AWTA/AWPFC).
• Sheep shorn, 2026/27: 56.3 million head, down 4.7% on the previous season (AWTA/AWPFC).
• Implied fleece weight: 249.3 million kg over 56.3 million head gives about 4.43 kg greasy per head, against about 4.30 kg a season earlier on the same arithmetic, a rise near 3%.

Heavier fleeces do not replace missing sheep. A flock down 4.7% with fleece weight up about 3% still delivers a smaller clip, and rebuilding a flock takes several breeding seasons. For a rug buyer the headcount line is the durable one. Auction prints move week to week, as the 170 cents per kg gap between the Australian season close and 30 September 2026 shows, while the number of shorn sheep caps how much coarse wool exists to buy.

Does a Higher Greasy Wool Price Raise the Price of a Rug?

Not on any evidence published in this set, because no publisher here reports the pass-through from a greasy wool price to a rug price. The published series give a fibre cost per kilogram. The numbers that would complete the calculation, wool weight per rug, the scouring yield a spinner assumes, yarn conversion cost, loom labour, freight and retail margin, appear in none of the seven sources cited here.

The record supports arithmetic at the kilogram and nothing further. The Fusca series rose $3.65 per kg in a year and the Farmers Weekly clean series rose $4.44 per kg, so a buyer holding a declared wool weight can multiply that weight by either figure. Without a declared weight there is nothing to multiply, and no source here publishes wool per square foot or per square metre for any rug construction. Timing is the second gap: fibre bought at 2025-26 prices is already in yarn and in stock while the 2026-27 clip is being priced, and no source dates the lag between an auction print and a showroom ticket.

Is Carpet Demand Strong Enough to Absorb the Higher Wool Price?

Demand is moving the other way. The Floor Covering News 2026 carpet state of the industry report describes a "continued erosion of demand for residential carpet". Floor Covering News is the carpet industry's own trade publication, so its framing is an industry account rather than an independent survey. Farmers Weekly reports industry leaders urging caution as the strong wool market warms up, including warnings that some manufacturers are lowering the wool share of their products.

Dearer fibre meeting weaker end demand changes composition before it changes price. A mill facing $7.14 per kg coarse wool and a soft residential carpet order book has three levers: raise the ticket, thin the pile, or blend wool with a cheaper fibre. The record supports the warning about the third lever and nothing else, because the shift comes from industry leaders quoted in the farm and trade press rather than from a published survey of manufacturers. Fibre content by percentage on the label is the only published number showing whether a rug sold in 2027 carries the same wool as that design sold in 2025.

What Should a Rug Buyer Check Before Paying a 2027 Wool Price?

Five numbers let a buyer test a rug quotation against the wool market, and each one already exists somewhere in the trade.

1. Fibre content by percentage, stated separately for pile and backing where the two differ.
2. Declared wool weight in kilograms, the only figure that turns a published per-kilogram movement into a cost for that rug.
3. Construction, hand-knotted, hand-tufted or machine woven, since construction sets how much yarn sits in the pile.
4. The date of the quotation and the series the supplier buys against, so the buyer can read that week's Eastern Market Indicator beside it.
5. Any change in wool content against a previous order of the same design, which is where a substitution shows first.

Which Numbers Decide the 2027 Wool Price for Rugs?

Three published readings will decide whether a 2027 rug quotation sits above or below the 2026 level. The first is the AWEX Eastern Market Indicator at the close of the 2026-27 season, against 1,989 cents per kg clean at the previous close and 1,819 cents per kg clean on 30 September 2026. The second is the outturn against the 249.3 million kg greasy clip forecast from 56.3 million shorn sheep. The third is the next New Zealand strong-wool reading, against $7.14 per kg on the Fusca indicator and $7.52 per kg clean on the Farmers Weekly measure.

Greasy wool

Fleece as it comes off the sheep, with grease, suint and vegetable matter in it. The Australian clip forecast is a greasy weight.

Clean wool

Wool weighed after scouring. The AWEX Eastern Market Indicator and the Farmers Weekly measure are quoted per kilogram clean.

Coarse or strong wool

The broad-micron class that carpet and rug yarn is spun from. New Zealand's Fusca indicator tracks coarse wool.

AWEX Eastern Market Indicator

An auction-based wool price series for the eastern Australian selling centres, quoted in cents per kilogram clean.

The sheep are fewer, the fleece is dearer, and the rug bought in 2027 carries the arithmetic of both whether or not the label spells it out.