Special Report: ANEA Celebrates 10th Anniversary
July 7, 2010 
More than 300 cotton industry professionals gathered in Rio de Janeiro last month for a gala black-tie celebration to commemorate the tenth anniversary of the Brazilian Cotton Exporters Association (ANEA). Held at the legendary Copacabana Palace Hotel, ANEA welcomed Brazilian growers, merchants, and service-providers of every stripe at its milestone event, along with 50-some guests from neighboring and far-flung countries.
In the ten years since five cotton industry leaders established ANEA, Brazil has made remarkable progress in cotton production and exports, both in volume and quality. A short time before ANEA’s founding, Brazil was the largest importer of cotton in the world (600,000 tons imported in 1995). Now the Brazilian cotton industry not only supplies one million tons of cotton to Brazil’s own burgeoning textile industry, it has also become one of the world’s top five cotton exporters.
According to ANEA’s current president, Marcelo Escorel, one of the great contributions that the association has made to Brazil’s cotton trade – and to buyers of Brazilian cotton worldwide – has been its diligent promotion of contract sanctity all along the cotton supply chain. ANEA, along with ABRAPA (Brazilian Cotton Producers Association) and ABIT (Brazilian Textile Industry Assn.), founded the Cotton Ethics Council in 2007, to establish and promote strict standards for all transactions of Brazilian cotton.
According to Escorel, who is also the Commercial Director at Louis Dreyfus Commodities Brazil, this Cotton Ethics Council has succeeded in elevating the professionalism and credibility of Brazil’s cotton exporters.
With production estimated at 1.2 million tons for Brazil’s current cotton harvest, which began in Mato Grosso and Bahia states last month, Brazil is poised to expand production for the 2011 harvest.
Antonio Esteve, President of Interagrícola and past President of ANEA, estimates that Brazilian cotton production will grow by more than 20% in the next season, with cotton plantings expanding beyond one million hectares, from 840,000 hectares this crop-year.
Marcelo Escorel, citing Brazil’s strengths in cotton production – large, high-tech growers and abundant cropland and water – says that Brazilian cotton production can easily expand to double its current output in a short time.
“If the world needs cotton, Brazil will be there to supply it,” declares Escorel.
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