WINDHOEK – Namibia‘s sought-after Swakara pelts once again stole the hearts of international buyers last Sunday when Agra sold 100 percent of the Swakara offering at the September 8 pelt auction in Copenhagen, Denmark.
The highest ever average price in Namibian dollars of N$2 534,54 per pelt was paid for a bundle of white pelts. An offer of 55 899 Swakara pelts worth some N$40 million was sold at the auction.
The average price of N$646,88 is a decrease of 7,19 percent on the N$696,97 achieved at the April 2013 auction. The pelt offer consisted of 40 263 black, 10 534 white, 4 302 grey and 800 diverse pelts. The highest price ever achieved for white Swakara was N$2 534,54 for a lot of 52 KF Selected Extra pelts, purchased by Roman Melikhov of Roma-Furs from Russia. The highest price for black pelts in Namibian dollars was N$1 856,71 for a lot of 82 O Light Selected Extra pelts, paid by Athanasios Konstantinou of Kastoria Greece.
The pelt offer was bought by 24 buyers with other prospective buyers bidding, but not being successful. The biggest buyer of Swakara was the company Astropel from Greece which purchased 19 286 pelts. Greece this time bought the most pelts, with Italy in second place and the agents from England in third place. The tendency of buyers being very selective was again clear with the price gap between higher and lower grades being wider once again.
Good quality pelts still achieved good prices, while lower grade pelt prices decreased further. The biggest drop in price was with the spotted pelts which is a correction of the very high prices the spotted pelts received over the last few auctions.
The top Namibian producer (with more than 250 pelts) at this auction was Danie Visser from Mariental who sold 301 pelts at an average of N$835,28. The top South African producer was Koos Kotze of Postmasburg who achieved an average price of R798,65 for 437 pelts. Agra established ProVision (formerly known as Professional Services Division – PSD) in 2009 with the main objective of providing a structured framework for rendering various specialised services to the Namibian agricultural sector.
By Deon Schlechter