Despite the wool market hovering around its lowest point in 10 years, non-mulesed wool continues to be in demand and is fetching premium prices.
And according to industry experts the call for non-mulesed wool is something the industry should get used to.
Nutrien Ag Solutions north-east wool manager, David Hart, said while it's tough to find positives in the struggling market, the past two weeks has been encouraging and there are categories that are in demand.
"Along with the better type wools, non-mulesed wool also sold better across the board," Mr Hart said.
"There is no doubt the demand is there and there needs to be because there is a bit of extra work required for non-mulesed sheep.
"This is a continuation of the pattern we are going to see with non-mulesed wool."
He said although the premium was stronger pre-Covid days, he anticipates it will continue its gradual progression.
"The non-mulesed wools in the current market haven't had the premiums we have seen for them over the years," he said.
"This is because the market has been restricted to demand from China and the demand for non-mulesed wool is not as strong from Chinese interests as it is from European.
"Nevertheless, the final destination for a lot of the wool that goes to China is in other countries, like Europe, so the Chinese too do require non-mulesed wool to meet those specifications."
Mr Hart said as far as increased competition goes, it is often noticeable in the auction room when non-mulesed wool is being sold.
"Quantifying how much the wool would have made if it was mulesed is hard to say exactly, but you know in your gut that that lot has made more money being non-mulesed than not," he said.
"When we value wool we get data from AWEX, which includes every single lot of wool sold in Sydney and Melbourne.
"It's sorted on micron and sorted in order of clean price within each point of a micron. Usually the top prices for each point of a micron are often dominated by non-mulesed lots."
He said the finer they are, the more pronounced that trend becomes.
"That is simply because for superfine wool, a greater proportion of that wool goes to Italy, which really is the only European processor left now of any volume," Mr Hart said.
Before Covid-19 influenced the market, there was clear evidence of this, but that has been less-pronounced as Italy hasn't been in the market, he said.
"The proportion of non-mulesed wool is growing," Mr Hart said.
"When the issue first came to light, there was certainly a lot of people that stopped mulesing fairly rapidly, but now there seems to be a steadier pace of people converting over each year.
"Whether that continues or accelerates will be determined by market forces."
Steve Kilby, Kirkdale, Wollogorang in southern NSW, who hasn't mulesed his Merino flock for five years said he has definitely seen the premium come through for his non-mulesed wool.
"When the drought was at its worst in January and February this year, I brought my shearing forward by a month to have them shorn before joining," Mr Kilby said.
"When we sold the wool at the end of March, just before the wool market plummeted, our wool had a premium of 150 cents more per kilogram, greasy. That equated to 10pc more.
"Our broker said on that particular day, the only wool they buyers showed real interest in was the non-mulesed wool."
Mr Kilby said when the wool market was travelling along at its higher level pre-Covid, he would receive a premium of about five per cent.
"I am sure there are a lot of those fashion houses in Europe that would prefer to put their product out and say they used non-mulesed wool," Mr Kilby said.
"Everyone is different, we didn't see it as a huge problem, you just have to really look at the timing of when you crutch and when you shear."