Although the wool sale, held at the Inveresk Railyards in Launceston, was only half completed yesterday, the sale's sole vendor, Roberts Ltd, found the overall results encouraging. The top price of 30,000c a kg for the bale of 16.3 micron superfine merino wool from the Ross property was paid by Japanese wool buyers Fujii.

Mr McEwan said that while he was extremely pleased to receive the top price, achieving the result had been a team effort.

He said none of his property's success, which includes numerous former world records, would have been possible without his manager John Groves, wool classer Alistair Strickland and his daughter Georgina Wallace, who helped establish his 23,000-strong flock.

Mr McEwan said that from his point of view the sale was pleasing, but he did not think growers of medium micron wools would have been very happy.

``I'd like to see the medium wools come up, because the danger here is, some years down the track we could get an overproduction of very fine wool,'' he said.

The other top prices paid yesterday were 20,000c a kg for a bale of wool grown by Fujii Tasmania Pty Ltd, of the Mt Morriston property at Ross, and 15,000c a kg for wool grown by Roderic O'Connor, at Connorville Station at Cressy.

All top three prices were paid by the Fujii group on behalf of Japanese wool buyer Ken Fujii. Roberts general wool manager Phillip Edwards said sales of fine wools were realising tremendous prices and woolgrowers in that category would be very happy.

Mr Edwards said that while it was pleasing to see such good prices for the superfine wools, it needed to be remembered that these only represented about 15 to 20 per cent of the total offering.