The new ambitions of Egyptian cotton
Audio 01:53
Cotton bales in Cairo, Egypt.
(Illustrative photo) Getty Images - Marco Vacca
By: Marie-Pierre Olphand Follow
5 mins
At the end of February, the Egyptian president called for more local cotton to be produced.
The objective is to give Egypt a place in the big leagues while production has fallen by 50% in the country over the past ten years.
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Egypt can do better, because it has already done much better even though it was another century.
At the end of the 19th century, local cotton was renowned the world over, thanks to the impetus of a French industrialist Louis Alexis Jumel, seduced by a specimen of extra-long staple cotton growing in a garden in Cairo.
But competition from half the price of staple cotton has relegated Egypt to a minor producer status.
To speak only of the last ten years, production has fallen by half and the cultivated areas also.
The US Department of Agriculture (USDA) forecast for the new Egyptian crop is 215,000 bales from 65,000 hectares.
This is still 30% less than last year.
A complex local market
The weakness of Egyptian cotton is above all the yield ... The seeds have been mixed without scruple for years, explains an Italian trader, which inevitably affected the harvests.
Today, Egypt still exports a large part of its luxury cotton, but for its spinning mills it imports the more common Upland variety, imported from Greece, the United States, Sudan, Benin and even Burkina Faso. .
512,000 balls were thus bought abroad during the last season, according to American statistics again.
"
Egyptian cotton is a very difficult market
", summarizes our Italian expert.
"
Because of corruption,
he said,
and restrictive regulations that limit, for seed issues, the countries allowed to sell their cotton to Egypt
."
The Syrian spinning mills in Egypt a new player that matters
Faced with this state of affairs, the country launched a new cotton strategy in 2017, reaffirmed last week by announcements from the presidency.
The presence of new spinning mills set up by Syrians fleeing the war is perhaps not for nothing.
These factories are among the most efficient in the country.
The pressure from their owner to have more local cotton, but also Indian cotton whose import is still banned, is strong.
The rise in prices in recent months of US-grown Pima quality, reminiscent of that of Egypt, has certainly not gone unnoticed in Cairo.
The temptation to take advantage of the financial windfall is great, especially since for the moment the demand is always stronger than the supply.
The very high quality cotton that Egypt is capable of producing represents only 3% of the cotton grown in the world.
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