Index for cotton plunges 4.5% in first half of October

Cotton prices in the Brazilian market have been decreasing since early October. Center for Advanced Studies on Applied Economics (CEPEA)/ESALQ Index for cotton type 41-4 (delivered in São Paulo city, payment in 8 days) dropped 4.54% in the partial of October (Sept. 30 to Oct. 14), closing at 1.7543 real or 1.0128 dollar per pound on Oct. 14. On balance, only a few trades have been closed, mainly when cotton growers were more flexible concerning prices. Purchasers were pressing quotes down, since some of them were still receiving the product from contracts and/or not able to transfer prices of the raw material to the final product. Many purchasers remained only observing the behavior of the market.

Overall, the cotton available in the spot market was also considered of low quality, which also limits trades. Buyers were mostly interested in the high quality cotton, which has low supply.

According to Secex (Foreign Trade Secretariat), 140.4 thousand tons of cotton were exported, an increase of 19.5% compared to August (117.5 thousand tons). Comparing to September 2010, the volume upped 55.8%. In 2011, shipments have amounted 335.7 thousand tons, 5.7% more than in the same period last year.

On Oct. 6, Conab (National Company for Food Supply) released a report indicating that the cotton planted area in the 2011/12 crop might reach between 1.36 and 1.49 million hectares, a variation from -2.9% to +6.1% in relation to the 2010/11 crop. The production may total between 1.93 and 2.11 million tons, an increase of 3.2%, on average.