Cotton poised to break into Australia’s top-three export commodities
For the first time in more than 30 years, cotton is on course to be one of Australia’s top three exports for the 2022 calendar year.
Recent figures from ABARES (the country’s bureau of agricultural and resource cconomics and sciences) show that between January and August 2022, Australia exported more than 560,000 tonnes of cotton, with a total value of just over 2 billion Australian dollars, equivalent to US $1.35 billion.
ABARES revealed that in the month of August alone, Australian cotton brought in export revenues of US$ 585 million, more than double the figure for the whole of drought-affected 2020.
Industry body Cotton Australia said there had been large increases in shipments to Bangladesh, India, South Korea, Malaysia, Thailand and Turkey.
All of this suggests that full-year figures are likely to show cotton as the third-ranked export commodity, by value, after wheat and beef. This will be Australian cotton’s highest ranking since 1988.
