Cotton Yarn Export Data 2026: Buyers, Prices, HS Codes

Bangladesh bought $535 million of Indian cotton yarn in just four months — April to July 2025 — while Egypt took $86 million and China $55 million (IBEF). One figure frames the whole trade: nearly half of everything India spins for export goes to a single neighbour. That concentration is both the opportunity and the risk any spinner reading cotton yarn export data in 2026 has to price in.

Cotton yarn is the intermediate product, not the finished good. It ships to knitters and weavers abroad who turn it into fabric and garments, so the buyer list is spinning-mill and fabric-mill procurement desks, not clothing brands. Here's what the shipment records show about who buys Indian yarn, the HS codes to search, count-wise pricing, and why the Bangladesh lane just got riskier.

What does cotton yarn export data show in 2026?

The cotton yarn export data points to a recovering but exposed business. After a soft FY2024-25 — exports slipped roughly 6% to about $3.55 billion and volume eased to near 1,150 million kg (Cybex trade data) — demand firmed through 2025, with early-year shipments running about 16% ahead year on year. India runs one of the world's largest spinning bases and exports roughly a quarter to a third of the cotton yarn it produces. The engine is huge. The problem is where the yarn lands.

South India carries most of the load: Coimbatore and Tiruppur account for about 60% of national spinning capacity, while north-Indian units in Punjab and Rajasthan feed the Bangladesh land trade. A mill manager in Tiruppur watches two things every morning — the ICE cotton price and the Dhaka buying mood. In 2026 a third has joined that list: policy.

Which countries buy the most Indian cotton yarn?

Bangladesh buys the most Indian cotton yarn by a wide margin — about 46% of exports, worth $535 million in April–July 2025 alone. China and Vietnam are the next big lanes; Egypt, Peru, Turkey and Sri Lanka round out the buyer set.

Top cotton yarn buyers of India, April–July FY26 by value:

1. Bangladesh — $535 million
2. Egypt — $86 million
3. China — $55 million

Two lanes to watch beyond the leaders: Vietnam and Peru were the fastest-growing destinations into 2025, each reportedly up more than 28% as buyers there spread sourcing wider. Egypt jumping above China in the FY26 window is the surprise — Egyptian mills are pulling more Indian yarn for their own knit and home-textile export lines. Anyone tracking cotton yarn export from India for the next order should be reading these secondary lanes, not just the Bangladesh headline.

Cotton yarn HS codes: 5205, 5206 and 5207

Get the code right or your search returns the wrong product. Cotton yarn other than sewing thread splits three ways (Flexport):

Most export tonnage sits in 5205 — plain grey or RFD yarn shipped to mills in bulk cones — which is why 5207 retail packs barely register in bulk trade. Do not confuse any of these with garments: finished clothing lives in HS Chapters 61 and 62, a completely different buyer universe. New to code-based searching? Start with how HS codes work.

The Bangladesh problem: one buyer, too much risk

Concentration this heavy is a standing liability, and 2025–26 proved it three times over. On 13 April 2025, Bangladesh's National Board of Revenue banned Indian cotton yarn imports through five land ports — Benapole, Bhomra, Sonamasjid, Banglabandha and Burimari — after mill-body lobbying that accused Indian exporters of mis-declaring counts and underpricing (The Week). Sea and air stayed open, but the land route was the cheap one. North-Indian SME spinners who trucked yarn across the border overnight suddenly faced port handling, longer lead times and higher cost.

A ban on the land route doesn't kill the trade — it re-prices it. The exporter who already mapped which Bangladeshi mills buy by sea keeps the order. The one who only knew the truck route loses it.

Two more clouds sit over the lane. Bangladesh graduates from UN Least Developed Country status on 24 November 2026, stripping the duty-free access its garment sector enjoys in the EU, UK, Canada and Japan — a demand shock that flows straight back to its yarn suppliers (The Daily Star). And Dhaka's own millers keep pushing to end the bonded-warehouse facility that lets exporters bring in Indian yarn in the 10–30 count range duty-free (ThePrint). Any Indian spinner betting the business on one border needs a second and third market already in the pipeline.

Count-wise pricing and the RoDTEP squeeze

Cotton yarn is priced by count and by comb. Coarser open-end and carded yarns in the 10–30 count band are the commodity tier — high volume, thin margin — while combed ring-spun yarn from 30s to 60s and finer commands a premium. In January 2025, 30-count combed yarn traded around ₹257–267/kg in Ludhiana. Buyers negotiate on count, ply, and whether the yarn is grey, RFD or dyed; half a rupee per kilo decides a container.

Then policy moved the floor. A February 2026 DGFT notification cut RoDTEP rates in half across the board — cotton yarn's export rebate dropped from about 3.4% to 1.7% of FOB value (Apparel Resources). South-Indian yarn prices fell ₹2–5/kg across widely traded counts in Coimbatore and Tiruppur as exporters recut offers to stay competitive into Bangladesh, China and Turkey (Fibre2Fashion). If you sell yarn, the rebate cushion is thinner this year — read the current numbers in our RoDTEP scheme rates guide.

A 170-basis-point cut in the rebate is a whole margin for a commodity-count spinner. The mills that survive it are the ones that already know exactly which overseas buyer pays for grade instead of chasing the lowest quote.

Raw cotton vs yarn: the policy that decides margins

A spinner's biggest cost is fibre, so cotton policy is yarn policy. On 19 August 2025, India scrapped the 11% import duty on raw cotton — a 5% basic duty, a 5% infrastructure cess and a 10% surcharge — initially through 31 December 2025, to cut input costs down the chain (USDA FAS, PIB). CITI called it the single biggest lever for spinning mills, levelling the field with Asian rivals who already buy cotton duty-free (Business Standard). Cheaper cotton in, more competitive yarn out — that is the whole equation, and it is why Indian cotton yarn exporters track domestic cotton and import policy more closely than any single overseas buyer.

How ShipScout turns cotton yarn export data into buyers

ShipScout is a global trade-intelligence platform — 11 billion-plus shipment records across 240+ countries, built as an affordable alternative to Panjiva and ImportGenius. For India-linked trade it works from mirrored licensed trade data, helping spinners find overseas buyers with data-backed targeting; public customs and bill-of-lading records for the US, EU, China and other markets are searchable directly. The yarn workflow:

• Search HS 5205 and 5206. See which mills abroad received cotton yarn last month, in what count and volume, and how often. Start in the company directory.
• Diversify past Bangladesh. Pull the Bangladesh buyer list by sea route, then build a second pipeline across Vietnam, China, Peru and Egypt before the next policy shock lands.
• Rank buyers by cadence, not size. A knitter clearing a container of 30s combed every fortnight beats a giant that tenders once a season.
• Vet before you ship. Check a counterparty's real shipment history first — here's how to verify an overseas partner before you're paid, and the full playbook in finding buyers for export from India.

Demand is recovering, the policy floor keeps moving, and the buyer list already sits in the shipment records. Cotton yarn export data turns that dangerous concentration into a to-do list: find the next buyer before the current one changes the rules. Start a free trial and search HS 5205 to read it.