Rows of white yarn bobbins on a ring spinning frame inside a textile mill.

Weekly sheet

What actually sets a cotton yarn price

Name: What actually sets a yarn price
Uploaded: 2026-08-23T15:33:18+05:00
Duration: 1 min 48 s
Description: Why one number arrives from a mill and eight decisions are hidden inside it, and why no published index contains any of them.

A cotton price, plus a conversion cost that depends on the count and the twist, plus the certification, plus freight on the terms you agreed. Six things, in the order they move the number.

Showing pages for fibre, yarn and fabric buyers. Some rows of this menu are hidden. Nothing on the page itself is.

A cotton yarn price is not one number. It is a cotton price, plus a conversion cost that depends on the count and the twist, plus whatever the certification costs to carry, plus freight on the terms you agreed. Two mills quoting the same 30s combed can be genuinely far apart and both be honest, because they are not quoting the same yarn. This page sets out the six things that actually move the number, in the order they move it, so that when you have two quotes in front of you, you can tell which of them is expensive and which of them is simply different.

No sheet is published yet. When it starts, it will carry indicative levels for cotton yarn from Pakistan, India, China, Turkey, collected from mills and traders. Until then, this page shows the published figures that do bear on a yarn price rather than nothing at all.

How a price is built

The six things that move the number

In the order they move it. The first two set most of what a mill has to charge, the next two decide whether it is even the same yarn, and the last two are where two honest quotes stop being comparable at all.

The cotton itself

A cotton yarn price starts as a lint price, and nothing a spinner does afterwards can push the number below what the fibre cost. That is the floor under everything else on this page, and it is why a quote written in one week and a quote written in another are not quoting the same yarn. Three things about the fibre matter before anything else. The staple length, because a longer staple spins finer and stronger and is paid for accordingly. The origin, because a grade name carries a different meaning in each growing country. And the contamination level, since anything that has to be picked out by hand is paid for somewhere. Ask what cotton is in the yarn before asking what the yarn costs.

The count

Count changes the conversion cost rather than the fibre cost. A finer yarn means more drafting, more spindles turning for the same weight and less delivered per machine hour, so the cost of turning a kilo of cotton into a kilo of yarn rises as the count rises. The steps are not smooth. The specifications further down this page run from 10s open end at the coarse end, through 20s and 30s to 40s, and then up to 60s and 80s, and the step to the finest counts is the largest of them, because those counts need better cotton as well as more machine time. A count quoted with no tolerance beside it has not yet said what it is selling.

Combed or carded, and the twist

Carded yarn is cleaned, drawn and spun. Combed yarn goes through one more machine that pulls out the short fibres and whatever trash survived carding, leaving a smoother, stronger, more even yarn and leaving waste behind as noil. Combing is therefore paid for twice, once in the machine time and once in the fibre that never reaches the cone, which is why 30s combed and 30s carded are two products rather than two prices for one. Twist is the quieter half of the same question. A higher twist multiplier means the spindle delivers less yarn per hour, so a hard twisted weaving warp costs more to make than a softly twisted knitting yarn of the same count on the same machine.

The blend

A polyester cotton yarn is two commodity curves inside one price, and they do not move together. Cotton follows a crop: a planting decision, a harvest, and whatever was carried over from the season before. Polyester follows the oil chain, through purified terephthalic acid and monoethylene glycol, so it moves with energy rather than with weather. A blended yarn can therefore get dearer in a week when cotton is falling, and the ratio decides how much of each curve you are carrying. The specifications below list filament polyester on its own lines, 150d/48 and 75d/36, virgin and recycled, because a buyer choosing between a blend and a cotton yarn is choosing between two markets and not just two numbers.

Certification

The certifications buyers actually ask for are a short list. GOTS for organic, OCS and RCS for a content claim, GRS where recycled content has to be proven back down the chain, BCI for Better Cotton, and OEKO-TEX for what is not in the finished yarn. What the price carries is rarely the fibre on its own. It is the chain of custody: segregated storage, a separate production run, a transaction certificate at every handover, and an audit that checks all of it. That is also why a certified yarn usually has a longer lead time as well as a higher price, and why a certificate named without its scope and its transaction certificate is not yet something you can sell against.

Where it ships from, and on what terms

A price without an Incoterm is not a price. Ex mill, or EXW, is the yarn on the cone at the gate and nothing else. FOB puts it on board at the named load port with the export formalities done. CFR adds the ocean freight, and CIF adds the insurance with it. DDP carries it to your door with the duty paid. Two quotes can look far apart and be the same offer on different terms, and the distance between ex mill and CIF is a real cost that somebody is carrying either way. Ask for the term, the named port and the validity date on the same line as the number, because freight moves faster than a yarn price does.

Reading two quotes

Why two quotes for the same count differ

Take one line off your own enquiry: 30s combed compact cotton, for knitting. Two mills answer, and the two numbers are a long way apart. Before you push back on the higher one, read what each of them has actually quoted.

The first mill is spinning a shorter staple it bought earlier, carded, on a softer twist, ex mill, and it will hold the price only briefly. The second is on a longer staple, combed, at a twist set for your fabric, certified with the transaction certificate to follow, quoted FOB from a named port and held open longer.

Both of those are honest prices, for two yarns that are not the same yarn. The combing and the longer staple explain one part of the gap. The certificate, and the chain of custody behind it, explain another. The rest is the freight and the export formalities that sit inside FOB and do not sit inside ex mill. Take those three out and whatever is left is the part worth negotiating, and it is usually far smaller than the gap you started with. That is the whole reason the checklist below exists: you cannot subtract what a quotation never said.

The checklist

What a quote must say before you can compare it

Eleven lines. A quotation carrying all of them can be set beside another one honestly. A quotation missing any of them is neither expensive nor cheap yet, because you do not know what it is for.

The count, and its tolerance. As singles, and as resultant too if it is plied. A count with no tolerance has not said what it is selling.
Combed or carded, with the spinning system beside it: ring, compact or open end.
The twist. As a twist multiplier if the mill will give one, and at the very least whether the yarn is twisted for knitting or for weaving.
The blend, and its split. Cotton rich is not a specification. Each split is a different machine setting and a different price.
The cotton. Origin and staple length, because a grade name on its own means something different in each growing country.
Certification, with its scope. The standard, what it covers, the licence number, and whether a transaction certificate travels with the shipment.
Packing. Cone or cheese, the cone weight, what the cones are packed in, and the net weight per carton or bag.
The Incoterm, written out. Ex mill, FOB, CFR, CIF and DDP are five different deals, not five ways of saying one.
The named ports, loading and discharge. An Incoterm with no port beside it is half a term.
The lead time, and what it is counted from: the order, the advance, or the approved sample.
How long the price is valid. A quotation with no validity date has already expired somewhere.

The same list written the other way round, as the specification you send rather than the quotation you read back, is step one of the raw material guide: write the yarn spec.

No sheet is published yet. Nothing on this page is estimated, modelled or filled in from another source. When the first collection round is complete the sheet appears here with the date it was collected.

What will be here

One row per specification, with count, spinning system, description, origin, price in US dollars, incoterm, unit, currency, date, blend and remarks. An Excel file with every column. Every past week kept at its own address so you can look back.

Back to market data

The specifications we collect

The counts and constructions that actually move in volume, cotton and polyester filament. This is the layout, not a price list: no number below has been published or invented.

The specification list for the weekly reference sheet, with empty price and week columns because no prices are published yet.
Count or denier	Spinning or type	Blend	Typical use	Unit	Incoterm
10s	Open end	100% cotton	Coarse weaving, denim weft, terry	kg	FOB
10s	Carded ring	100% cotton	Coarse weaving and knitting	kg	FOB
20s	Carded compact	100% cotton	Weaving	kg	FOB
30s	Carded compact	100% cotton	Weaving and knitting	kg	FOB
30s	Combed compact	100% cotton	Weaving and knitting	kg	FOB
40s	Combed compact	100% cotton	Knitting and weaving	kg	FOB
60s	Combed compact	100% cotton	Weaving	kg	FOB
80s	Combed compact	100% cotton	Weaving	kg	FOB
150d/48	NIM, raw white, virgin	100% polyester filament	Knitting and weaving	kg	FOB
150d/48	NIM, raw white, recycled	100% polyester filament	Knitting and weaving	kg	FOB
75d/36	NIM, raw white, virgin	100% polyester filament	Fine knits and linings	kg	FOB
75d/36	NIM, raw white, recycled	100% polyester filament	Fine knits and linings	kg	FOB

Full column set: Count · Spinning system · Description · Origin · Price USD · Incoterm · Unit · Currency · Date · Blend · Remarks

Be told when it publishes

The sheet and these numbers, by email

One email a week: the weekly market summary, with the yarn reference sheet attached once it goes live. Nothing else, no other mailing, and one click to stop. You can also just check this page.

While the sheet is in collection

What is published, and what it can honestly tell you

There is no single honest number for "the price of cotton yarn". A price belongs to a count, a spinning route, a blend, a quantity, an origin, a payment term and a delivery period, and changing any one of them moves it more than a week of market movement does. That is the reason the sheet is a sheet of specifications rather than a figure, and it is why nothing below is a quote.

What is published, and is lawful for us to republish, is two things: what yarn actually crossed a border for, by origin, from official trade statistics; and how the producer price of each yarn family has moved, as index numbers. The first is an average of a mix, not a price for your count. The second is a direction, not a level. Together they will tell you whether a mill's "the market has moved" is true. Neither will tell you what to pay, and we would rather say so than publish a range we cannot stand behind.

Why there is no single number

What actually sets a yarn price

Why one number arrives from a mill and eight decisions are hidden inside it, and why no published index contains any of them.

1 min 48 · narrated, with captions · 4.5 MB

Read it instead

A mill sends you one number for a kilogram of yarn. That number is eight separate decisions.

You control several of them. Which means several of them are negotiable, if you know they are there.

A finer count makes fewer kilograms an hour on the same spindle, for the same hour of power and labour.

Three products, not three grades of one. Combing throws away short fibre as noil, and you pay for what is left.

Ring, rotor, air jet and vortex are different machines with different economics, not quality steps.

A finer count needs a longer, stronger cotton. That is a dearer fibre, not the same fibre spun thinner.

You do not buy one kilogram of fibre to make one kilogram of yarn. Ask what conversion the quote assumes.

More turns per inch is more time on the frame. A high twist voile yarn costs more than a soft twist knitting yarn.

A polyester cotton yarn is not the average of two fibre prices. The two settle at different moisture allowances.

Cone weight, dyed against greige, shades per lot, and the delivery term. None of them is the count.

None of these eight appears in any published price index, anywhere in the world. That is why an index is not the tool for this job.

The buyer guide walks all eight, tells you what a calm reading looks like, and gives you a costing sheet to build the price yourself.

Yarn, official statistics

Cotton yarn export prices by country

Cotton yarn (HS 5205) exports for 2025, the newest year all three origins have reported. The average value per kilo reflects each origin's product mix, counts, combed share and packing, as much as its price level, so compare trends rather than levels.

Cotton yarn exports of Pakistan, India and China for 2025: tonnes, value and average dollars per kilo.
Origin	Tonnes	Value	Avg USD/kg
Pakistan	259,237	$649M	2.50
India	1,081,969	$3,191M	2.95
China	219,632	$897M	4.08

What this means for the yarn export benchmark

What this is Cotton yarn exports under HS 5205 for Pakistan, India and China in the newest year all three have reported, with tonnes, value, and the average dollars per kilo we compute from those two.

How to read it One row per exporting country: how many tonnes of cotton yarn it shipped that year, what buyers paid for it in total (M is millions of dollars), and in the last column the average price per kilo, which is simply that value divided by those tonnes. The last column is the benchmark figure. Follow one origin's row from year to year rather than racing origins against each other, because each country ships a different mix of yarns.

What moves it Cotton cost is most of it. The remainder is the count range each country sells, the combed share, the packing, and the currency it prices in.

How to use it A level and direction check by origin before you open a quotation, and a way to see which origin has been getting dearer relative to the others.

The trap This averages everything a country shipped, so an origin selling more coarse carded yarn looks cheap when it is only selling a different product. Read one origin over time rather than one origin against another in a single year.

UN Comtrade, national statistics offices' own reporting. Read on 14 October 2026. This exact query in UN Comtrade (opens in a new tab)

Spinning routes

Yarn price trends by type

Producer prices for the yarn families a buyer chooses between, each set to 100 at the start of the window so the only question they answer is the honest one: over the same period, which route moved further. The published index for the latest month is in the table underneath.

Cotton spun 101.0 +1.0% since Sept 24
Synthetic and other spun 101.6 +1.6% since Sept 24
Textured and twisted filament 111.0 +11.0% since Sept 24
All fibre, yarn and thread mills 108.5 +8.5% since Sept 24

Each line set to 100 in Sept 24, because these indexes are published against different base years and their raw levels cannot be compared. 24 months to August 2026.

Show the rebased monthly numbers

Period	Cotton spun	Synthetic and other spun	Textured and twisted filament	All fibre, yarn and thread mills
Sept 24	100.0	100.0	100.0	100.0
Oct 24	97.7	98.5	99.5	99.3
Nov 24	97.7	98.5	99.3	99.2
Dec 24	97.9	99.4	101.0	100.0
Jan 25	97.9	99.4	101.2	100.1
Feb 25	97.9	99.4	100.5	99.8
Mar 25	97.9	99.4	101.4	100.3
Apr 25	97.9	99.5	101.0	100.1
May 25	97.9	99.5	102.2	101.0
Jun 25	97.9	99.5	104.1	101.9
Jul 25	97.9	99.5	104.4	102.0
Aug 25	97.9	99.8	103.6	101.7
Sept 25	97.9	99.8	103.2	101.5
Oct 25	97.9	100.0	103.6	101.8
Nov 25	97.9	100.0	105.3	102.6
Dec 25	97.9	100.0	105.0	102.4
Jan 26	97.9	100.0	105.0	102.4
Feb 26	97.9	100.0	105.5	102.5
Mar 26	97.9	100.0	106.0	102.9
Apr 26	97.9	100.5	106.3	103.3
May 26	100.2	101.6	108.2	104.8
Jun 26	100.2	101.6	111.2	106.2
Jul 26	100.2	101.6	111.5	106.3
Aug 26	101.0	101.6	111.0	108.5

Cotton spun 82.3 index, August 2026 +3.3% on the year
Synthetic and other spun 144.9 index, August 2026 +1.8% on the year
Textured and twisted filament 218.1 index, August 2026 +7.1% on the year
All fibre, yarn and thread mills 123.4 index, August 2026 +6.8% on the year

Cotton spun and Synthetic and other spun were reported unchanged in 10 and 9 of the last twelve months. Few producers reprice into a series like that, so it is a slow moving reference, not a month-by-month test of what a mill tells you.

The most recent month is preliminary and BLS may revise it for up to four months. The whole window is refetched every run rather than added to, so a revision shows up here instead of being frozen.

What this means for the producer price indexes

What this is United States producer price indexes for the series in the key, each rebased to 100 at the start of the window so they can be read against one another on a single scale.

How to read it Every line starts together at 100 on the left edge, so the chart answers one question: which input has climbed furthest since then. A line at 110 has risen ten per cent over the window, one at 95 has fallen five, and where two lines pull apart their costs have genuinely diverged. The list under the chart gives each series' latest published level and its change over the past year; those raw levels sit on different base years, so never compare or divide them directly.

What moves it The cost of the fibre underneath, energy, and how much pricing power the mills in that category currently have.

How to use it Checking a supplier story over months, not weeks. When a mill says the market moved, this shows the direction and rough size of the move in that family of yarn in the United States. Where a series is flagged as slow moving above, do not read a flat line as proof that nothing moved.

The trap These are index numbers for United States producers, not price levels and not your supplier country. They tell you the shape and size of a move, never what anything costs. The rebasing to 100 is our arithmetic and not the statistics office.

US Bureau of Labor Statistics producer price indexes, read on 14 October 2026. A work of the US federal government, in the public domain. The rebasing is ours, not theirs. BLS producer price indexes (opens in a new tab)

Neither of these is the reference sheet and neither is a substitute for it. They are an average export value and a set of index numbers, published by other people, shown here with the date each was read. The sheet, when it exists, will be quotes we were actually given, with the day we were given them.

Read this first

What these numbers are, and what they are not

These are indicative reference levels collected from mills and traders in the named origins. They are not offers, not tradeable quotes and not an index. Actual prices depend on quantity, quality, payment terms and delivery period. Always confirm with the mill before committing.

We publish what we were actually quoted, with the date it was quoted. We do not publish anything taken from a paid data service, because that data belongs to the people who collected it. Where a public source is better than ours, we link to it on the sources board instead of copying it.

Questions

Common questions

Why do two mills quote very different prices for the same count?

Because they are usually not quoting the same yarn. Different cotton, a different twist, combed against carded, a certificate one carries and the other does not, and a different Incoterm will all sit inside what looks like one count. This page sets out the six things in the order they move the number.

The six things that move the number

What should a yarn quotation contain?

Count, combed or carded, twist multiplier, blend ratio, cotton origin, any certification, packing, the Incoterm and port, the lead time and how long the price stands. Anything missing from that list is something you will end up arguing about later.

What a quote must say

Do you publish a price list?

No. Yarn is quoted against a specification and a shipment date, so a list would be wrong for most readers on most days. Send the specification and you get quotes from mills that can actually run it.

Ask for a quote

What does it cost to ask for a quote?

Nothing. You pay no fee to send a request, to receive quotes or to be introduced to a mill. The supplier pays us a success fee, and only when a shipment actually happens. If nothing ships, nobody pays us.

How the desk works

Ask for a quote on your own specification

Send the count, the blend, the certification you need and the port. What comes back is a price on your yarn rather than an average of somebody else's, and there is no fee to ask.

Ask for a quote Write the yarn spec first