Cotton Posts Worst Month Since 1986 on Slower China Demand
Source: Cotton Posts Worst Month Since 1986 on Slower China Demand Date: 2008-11-07
Overseas buyers canceled orders for 41,300 bales of cotton in the week ended Oct. 23, or almost three-fourths of total sales, according to Peter Egli, the director of risk management in Phoenix for U.K.-based Plexus Cotton Ltd. Most of the cancellations came from China, the largest buyer of U.S. cotton, he said.
China, the world's biggest garment and shoe supplier, will ``likely see a sharp drop in mill consumption,'' Egli wrote today in a report. Coupled with a crop at least as big as last year's, Chinese imports are going to ``slow down considerably from here on,'' he said.
Cotton futures for December delivery fell 0.8 cent, or 1.8 percent, to 44.29 cents a pound on ICE Futures U.S. in New York. The price earlier reached 43.64 cents, the lowest for a most-active contract since February 2005. The fiber has lost 4.2 percent this week and 23 percent this month, the biggest monthly drop since at least April 1986, when Bloomberg began reporting on the commodity.
Lower China Imports
China's fiber imports will decline next year as a slowing global economy continues to hurt demand for clothes and bedding, Ma Zhanping, deputy director of trade and economics with the country's National Development and Reform Commission, said earlier this month.
Chinese cotton output, a record 8 million metric tons in 2007, will be ``basically the same'' this year, as higher yields offset a decline in planted area, according to Ma.
U.S. cotton export sales tumbled 82 percent to 57,967 bales last week, even though prices are below the approximately 70-cent per-pound cost of production. On Oct. 10, the U.S. Department of Agriculture lowered its export forecast for the year through July 2009 to 13 million bales from 14.5 million projected in September. A bale of cotton weighs 480 pounds (218 kilograms).
``In the end it all depends on how bad this economic downturn will get and to what level cotton consumption at the end-user level will sink,'' Egli said.
The recent strength in the dollar ``isn't helping cotton,'' either, according to Rogers Varner, president of Varner Brothers in Cleveland, Mississippi.
This month, the dollar posted its biggest increase in 16 years against a basket of six major currencies, making U.S. fiber more costly for overseas mills already facing a credit crunch.
``Whatever else one thinks about cotton, he had better be clued in to where the dollar is going, because all else is secondary,'' Varner wrote today in e-mailed comments.
Cotton has fallen 35 percent this year.
