Business

Delegation Hard Sells Strengths Of Australian Cotton To Indian Spinning Mill Owners

An eight-member Australian delegation met select spinning mill owners as well as traders in Ludhiana, Mumbai, Ahmedabad and Coimbatore, to whom a presentation was recently made about the advantages of importing Australian cotton.

Speaking on the sidelines of the meeting, Matthew Bradd, Chairman of the Australian Cotton Shippers Association Matthew Bradd said that they would like Indian mill owners to import high quality cotton from Australia.

“India has consistently purchased Australian cotton year-on-year, but last year's monsoon condition and the resultant smaller Indian crop led to an increased demand by the mills here to maintain production. In fact, India topped in consumption of Australian cotton at 22 per cent last year,” he said.

During the two-hour presentation, the delegation comprising of cotton shippers, a cotton grower and a research scientist shared the Australian cotton story with special emphasis on zero contamination, quality characteristics of the fibre and their complete package offering.

“Last year, the Australian cotton crop had peaked to 4.2 million bales from 3.7 million bales during the earlier season. Incidentally, we don't have a domestic market for cotton. The entire volume is exported to global markets. Nearly 80% is exported to countries such as India, China, Indonesia and Bangladesh and the remaining 20% is taken up by Pakistan, Taiwan, Korea, Japan and Turkey,” he said.

He said that until three years ago, Australia had depended on China absorb its cotton exports. “When China changed its import policy, we were left with a huge inventory. Now, we have strategically decided not to focus on one country for export. When governments change, policies change as well. So we have to be careful,” he said.

He said that cotton picking in Australia is 100% mechanised, due to which there is zero contamination.

“It has been ideal for Indian spinning mills to source Australian cotton as at the fag-end of the cotton season in India, mills start looking to import quality fibre,” he said.