Alliance of European Flax-Linen & Hemp’s latest estimates predict average straw yields of 6-7 tons per hectare for spring flax, a significant milestone that has not been seen since 2019. While winter flax, cultivated on 30,000 hectares for this harvest, shows slightly lower performance with the overall prospects remaining strong. Flax straw, the raw material for fibre extraction during scutching, is expected to be abundant.

The area under cultivation for European Flax™ is projected to reach at least 180,000 hectares for both spring and winter flax combined, the highest since 2020. This expansion suggests that the European sector is poised to achieve record level yields of flax straw, the building block for premium flax fibres for composite applications, in a single harvest.

Whilst the exact amount of flax fibre to be extracted from this volume remains undetermined at this stage, the retting process, set to occur in the summer, will provide more detailed production output data.

Scutching of the current harvest is scheduled to begin in Autumn 2024 in French, Belgian and Dutch factories.