CMDT

Stock performance

History

The Compagnie Malienne pour le Développement des Textiles (CMDT) was created in 1974, taking over the cotton development work previously carried out by a French state company. It has organized Mali's cotton sector ever since, through cycles of booms, price crises, and restructuring, and remains state-owned.

Business model

CMDT supplies seeds, fertilizer, and advice to hundreds of thousands of smallholder cotton farmers, buys their seed cotton at a guaranteed price set each season, gins it in its factories in towns such as Koutiala and Fana, and sells the cotton fiber for export and the cottonseed to local oil mills.

Market position

CMDT controls Mali's cotton industry, which has at times made Mali the largest cotton producer in Africa.

Country impact

Cotton is Mali's second-largest export after gold and one of the main sources of cash income for rural households in the south of the country, so CMDT's purchase prices and input supplies directly affect millions of people. Its fortunes swing with world cotton prices, rainfall, and pest outbreaks.