Wet weather following the drought has disrupted the supply of wool coming up for auction in the North Island.
At Thursday's North Island sale 4600 bales were offered, more than a third below what had been rostered.
And the next North Island sale scheduled in a fortnight has been cancelled because of the lack of wool.
New Zealand Wool Services International marketing executive Malcolm Ching said wet whether has delayed shearing, but he says the impact of the drought is also starting to show up.
"Wool supply at that time, if the weather had have carried on farmers would still have been able to shear to a certain degree, there would have been a reduction in volume at the moment, but we were anticipating picking it up later in the season."
Mr Ching said the poorer weather now is having an immediate impact which has drastically dropped the wool supply on the market.
It coincides with normal seasonal downturn flows, as well as high stock levels in the Chinese market.
"They're not coming back into our market at the moment to replenish those stocks, that is now coinciding with lower wool volumes, so we're seeing a pretty flat market at the moment."
At Thursday's sale 83% of the 4600 bales on offer were sold with most prices firm or up a little, except for lambs wool which eased.
Next week's South Island sale will be twice the size, with more than 9000 bales on offer.
