American Cotton Shippers Association (ACSA) members warehouse, segregate, finance, sell, and ship the majority Upland and Pima cotton from every US producing region to domestic and international customers. Our members forward contract purchases, sales, and bear all commercial, domestic, and international supply chain risks each crop marketing year.
As we look to 2019, we face uncertain and certain challenges. The uncertain challenges consist of the implications and after effects from trade disputes and tariff impact on the physical container flows, timing, and volumes to and from the United States. Import flows drive origin ocean container supplies. Changes may mean unanticipated supply chain disruptions that have the potential to further impact US cotton competitiveness to export markets already affected by tariffs, currency depreciations, and tightened customer credit lines.
The certain challenges remain our industry’s stated and continuing supply chain evolution to move from serving mainly domestic consumers to primarily global customers within dynamic domestic and international environments. Progress requires significant structural changes from production to final consumption to improve cotton “flow” throughout the global cotton supply chain.
Our interrelated initiatives remain focused on how to improve cotton flow: digitalization, and increased supply chain alignment, velocity and visibility. We seek continued collaboration with truckers, ocean carriers, container yards, and port facilities to improve ready pickups that anchor more reliable relationships with cotton warehousemen.
We are actively engaged with other stakeholders to refine and implement more systemically efficient chassis utilization in our key demand areas to help improve driver productivity and handle more cotton loads per day. We are working to implement agreed-upon changes in shipper/warehouse procedures, utilizing enhanced technologies to yield increased performance, reliability, and transparency.
These efforts will be conducted in conjunction with continued examination and focus on streamlining regulatory and compliance procedures in the global marketplace for cotton.