Tour Acquaints Overseas Textile Customers with U.S. Cotton Industry

Textile executives representing 18 countries are visiting the U.S. Cotton Belt this week (September 22-29) to familiarize themselves with U.S. cotton and how the fiber is produced, processed and marketed.

The biennial COTTON USA Orientation Tour is sponsored by Cotton Council International (CCI).

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CCI President John Burch, a Bakersfield, CA cooperative official, said this event “will help tremendously in educating overseas textile operations on U.S. cotton’s advantages, from the fiber’s high quality and purity to our industry’s highly efficient delivery system. This tour, like its predecessors, also will strengthen our existing relationships with these customers and enhance future business opportunities.”

The 34 participants represent 28 individual companies in Bangladesh, China, Colombia, Ecuador, El Salvador, Hong Kong, India, Indonesia, Japan, Korea, Mexico, Pakistan, Peru, Taiwan, Thailand, Turkey, Venezuela and Vietnam. These 28 companies are expected to consume about 3.2 million bales in 2013. U.S. cotton exports to those companies are estimated at about one million bales.

The countries represented on the tour consume about 93 million bales per year, which represents about 75 percent of the world’s consumption. The countries import about 31 million bales annually, or about 85 percent of the world’s total cotton imports.

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Tour participants will visit a cotton farm and gin in the Mississippi Delta, tour cotton farms in West Texas, observe cotton research in North Carolina, and see the USDA cotton classing office in Bartlett, TN. They will meet with exporters in the four major Cotton Belt regions and get briefings from CCI, the National Cotton Council, Cotton Incorporated, the American Cotton Shippers Association, the Texas Cotton Association, the Lubbock Cotton Exchange, AMCOT, the American Cotton Producers, the Southern Cotton Growers Association, the Plains Cotton Growers Association, Texas Cotton Producers, the Western Cotton Shippers Association, the San Joaquin Valley Quality Cotton Growers Association and Supima.

More than 800 textile executives from 60-plus countries have participated in CCI’s Orientation Tour since its inception in 1968.

The Tour is designed to increase U.S. cotton customers’ awareness of the types/qualities of U.S. cotton, help them gain a better understanding of U.S. marketing practices and enhance their relationships with U.S. exporters. Over the years, the Tour has led many foreign textile manufacturers to develop an appreciation for U.S. cotton fiber quality, enhance the U.S. cotton industry’s reputation as a reliable supplier, and help U.S. cotton capture additional market share overseas.

 

Source: Cotton Council International and National Cotton Council

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