New crop sales are reaching 30,000 tons.

Current crop stocks are over and therefore ginners are focusing on the new crop. Recently, there is a lot of demand for the Greek new crop that has resulted to several new sales. Buyers are international merchants as well as Turkish spinners. The trend of last season, were fix prices where increasing and at the same time basis was also increasing, is still valid for the new crop.

As a result the new crop couple of months ago was sold at 75 c/lb FOT or even to 100 on Dec 10, while today offering fix prices are higher than 83 c/lb or 300-350 on Dec 10 FOT. It has become a tradition that whoever enters the Greek market earlier pays the cheapest price (fix or on call).

Regarding new crop acreage things are very promising. Combining several sources it is more likely that the acreage will reach about 250,000 he. In this calculation we are excluding the so called ‘dry fields' which are the ones that farmers are cultivating only to get the subsidy.

Cotton fields in Lamia and Levadia areas will remain about the same while in Thessaly and Macedonia will increase by about 20-25%. Under normal weather conditions the lint production will easily exceed the 250,000 tons, while it is obvious that growers will aim for high yields having noticed the very competitive lint prices.

Kind regards