Cotton Australia celebrates ‘exceptional quality’ of new crop
Industry trade body Cotton Australia has announced that around 85% of the country’s new cotton crop has now been picked. It added that feedback so far from growers and ginners indicated better-than-expected yield and, in some cases, “exceptional quality”, despite challenges.
Cotton Australia’s general manager, Michael Murray, said indications are that the 2022-2023 crop may just fall short of the previous season’s 5.6 million bales, a record figure.
He said that, this season, rainfall became a problem in parts of New South Wales and southern Queensland in late 2022 with severe flooding recorded in many growing areas, as well as crop and infrastructure damage. But better conditions, including a warmer start to this calendar year than anticipated had resulted in a boost for growers, Mr Murray said.
He went on to describe the quality of the crop ginned and classed to date as “exceptionally high, with lint that is white and clean, while also recording good fibre length and strength”.
In his comments, Michael Murray said there were forecasts that ginners in Asia will receive high volumes of cotton fibre from Brazil and the US in the 2022-2023 season, but he said many ginners regard Australian cotton as “the best value” from the point of view of quality and because of lower transportation costs and turnaround times.
“We sell every bale we grow,” he said, “so clearly the global demand is there, and as global economic conditions improve, so too will demand for our cotton.”
