Snow in China Affects Cotton Deliveries

Snow blanketed the southern provinces of Jiangsu, Anhui, Hubei and Hunan in China last week, slowing cotton delivery and transportation, cottonchina.org reports. This resulted in more active merchant-to-merchant business in northern China and rising cotton prices. While most mills were not purchasing cotton last week, they are anticipating the start of the third government reserves cotton auction, the website says. In addition, high-quality cotton from the Xinjiang region has experienced greater demand as the supply of high-quality cotton from inland China diminishes.

The website also reports that China imported 118,600 tonnes of cotton in October. That marked an increase of 16 percent over the previous month and 23 percent more than last October. During the first 10 months of 2009, China has imported 1,196,900 tonnes of cotton, a decline of 36 precent from the same period of last year.