Direction of the Ginning Industry
September 14, 2009 For sure the Lubbock Cotton Growers Co-op Gin’s new plant is the only one going up in the U.S. And it’s probably the only one in the world.
“I don’t know of another project remotely close to this scope – new or used – in the world right now, and this would definitely be the biggest project,” says Ross Rutherford, Product General Manager of Lummus Corporation in Lubbock. “There’s still work to be done, but they’re hard at it every day.”
The new gin is, as they say, “conveniently located” a little over three miles from Lummus’ Lubbock office. It will be the second largest gin in the U.S. behind Adams Gin in Leachville, AR.
Rutherford explains that the Lubbock Cotton Growers Co-op Gin is a six “less 1” 222-saw gin plant and will initially be able to turn out 90 bales per hour. Its “less one” configuration allows room to add equipment – a third line of two-stage drying/pre-cleaning and a sixth ginning/lint cleaning line – to raise capacity to 120 bales per hour.
“I think what you’re seeing with the new gin is the direction the ginning industry is going – especially in the U.S.,” Rutherford says. “I grew up on a small dairy farm – a 50-cow operation. As nice as that was, it wasn’t feasible from a business model standpoint as times changed. So in the mid-1970’s we got out of the dairy business. What you’re seeing now are multi-thousand-cow operations. It’s just so far from what I grew up with, but I liken it to what’s going on in the ginning industry.”
What that means is that as small gins grow older, rather than spend money on upgrades, gin companies will combine to build bigger, modern and more strategically located plants.
“They’ll be taking advantage of economies of scale and technology,” he explains. “And they’ll take less labor to operate. It’s getting harder and harder to find crews.”
Lubbock Cotton Growers Co-op Gin is set up so that all of the equipment can be split into smaller units. “Half of the pre-cleaning can be run; they can run only one press; they can run only three gin stands,” Rutherford explains. “They don’t have to run all of the connected horsepower at one time if they don’t need to. That’s a major opportunity for cost savings.
“You want to build flexibility; you want growth without a huge expenditure down the line,” he adds. “By laying it out like they did, it cost them a little more from a foundation and electrical standpoint for equipment that is not there, but the subsequent investment will now primarily be in machinery and installation only. That’s a good long-term strategy.”
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