GINNING of Australia’s 2020 cotton crop is under way, with production forecast by Cotton Australia at 600,000 bales, down 150,000 bales from the industry body’s December estimate.

A crop this small has not been seen since the 1980s.

It comes in under the low of recent years — 601,480 bales in 2008 — and represents just 11 per cent of the record 5.3-million-bale crop picked in 2012.

With three new gins built in southern New South Wales in recent years, Australia now has a total of 38 gins, but trade sources say only 24 will operate this season due to the reduced supply of cotton which has prompted most ginners to concentrate their operations for this year.

In terms of production, the brightest prospects are in Central Queensland, where all three gins — two in Emerald and one in Moura — are opening the 2020 ginning season.

One in Emerald is already running.

Queensland Cotton general manager cotton John Robinson said this year’s cotton volumes in southern Queensland and northern NSW were “absolutely a lot worse” than anything seen so far this century.

“I’m pretty sure it’s the worst ginning season I’ve seen in 26 years,” Mr Robinson said.

Recent rain in Queensland and northern NSW has been welcomed to replenish water supplies and subsoil reserves for the 2020/21 cotton crop, but will come too late to improve yields for much of the current crop.

Nearly all crops have been grown on bore water alone, with little to no rain to replenish on-farm storages, or afford irrigation allocations or dryland production.

“There are some growers who will grow the cotton on after this rain, and other crops will come in quickly because they’ve run out of water.”

While gins in northern NSW can open in March in big years, Cotton Australia northern NSW regional manager Alec Macintosh said most would start up after Easter or maybe even Anzac Day.

This was to ensure enough cotton was in the yard to enable gins to keep operating once they started for the season.

“This year, they’ll gin half of what they did last year, and most of them only ran one shift last year.”

In big years, gins run around the clock on two shifts.

“A lot will be running just at night because of the cheaper electricity.”

Cotton Australia estimates just 2500 hectares of cotton will be picked in the Gwydir Valley this year, well down from areas seen in recent times of 15,000-95,000ha, depending on water availability.

“Cotton Australia is saying 60,000ha for the whole of Australia this year.”

This compares with 292,380ha harvested last year which produced 2.1 million bales.

While the Upper and Lower Namoi valleys planted around 43,000ha of cotton in 2018, Mr Macintosh said only around 14,000-15,000ha have been planted in the current season.

In southern NSW, RivCott chief executive officer Sam Buster said cold weather in the normal planting window meant the crop was planted late, and ginning was therefore likely to start in May instead of April.

“In 2018 we ginned 335,000 bales on a double shift for six months.

“This year, we’ll be doing more like four weeks on one shift.”

The last gin to start up this year will be the Cubbie facility at Dirranbandi, which will be running in June-July to handle cotton grown in northern Australia.

 

QUEENSLAND
OPENING FOR 2020		CLOSED FOR 2020
Gin	Owner	Gin	Owner
Emerald	LDC	Cecil Plains	Queensland Cotton
Emerald	Queensland Cotton	St George	Queensland Cotton
Moura	Queensland Cotton	Goondiwindi	RMI Carrington*
Dalby	Queensland Cotton
Dalby	LDC
Beardmore	Queensland Cotton
Dirranbandi	Cubbie
Macintyre	Namoi*
NEW SOUTH WALES
OPENING FOR 2020		CLOSED FOR 2020
Gin	Owner	Gin	Owner
Moree	Brighann Cotton	Darling River Cotton	Harris Cotton*
Moree	LDC	North Bourke	Namoi*
Moree	North West Ginning	Mungindi	Namoi*
Midkin	AFF	Mungindi	Queensland Cotton
Wee Waa	Auscott	Collymongle	Harris Cotton
Wee Waa	Queensland Cotton	Koramba	AFF
Merah North	Namoi*	Ashley	Namoi*
Carroll	Carroll Cotton	Moomin	Namoi*
Boggabri	Namoi*	Wathagar	Namoi*
Trangie	Auscott	Yarraman	Namoi*
Trangie	Namoi*	Warren	Auscott
Warren	Queensland Cotton
Hay	Auscott
Hillston	Namoi*
Carrathool	RivCott
Whitton	Southern Cotton

An asterisk indicates the gin’s status for 2020 could not be confirmed with the owner or operator.

All ginners were contacted by Grain Central about their plans for this year, but not all were available for comment.

 

 

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