The Role of Cotton Arbitration & Testing General Organization in Maintaining The Quality of Egyptian Cotton and its Competitiveness in The International Market

For the importance of cotton as a strategic crop, the state undertakes a special care for maintaining its existance, continuance and improving the varieties through the concerned ministries, organizations and other sectors; including Cotton Arbitration & Testing General Organization (CATGO) that was established to maintain Egyptian cotton superior quality and prevent all forms of mixing, cheating and contamination.

CATGO’s Responsibility is to achieve Three Main Goals:
First: Maintaining the purity of the Egyptian cotton varieties preventing all forms
of mixing varieties or grades and protecting its superior properties.
Second: controlling and supervising all cotton handling processes starting from
picking, its delivery to marketing rings in all rural areas in producing
governorates till its delivery to local spinning mills or export aiming to keep
its quality increasing the degree of homogenity within lots, preventing all
forms of mixing and contamination through the work of CATGO’s classers
in Alexandria and all cotton producing governorates.
Third: Offering technical services to all dealing parties in both seed and lint cotton
during all handling stages, and issuing locally and internationally recognized
certificates for classing, fiber testing and moisture regain percentage.
5
5
For achieving CATGO’s goals according to the laws and regulations, the tasks
of its classers are as follows :
• Classification and grading of seed-cotton in the marketing rings sac/sac, drawing
samples for ginning out-turn, excluding mixed, off-type, dampened and
contaminated sacs, also sacs sewed by synthetic fibers and those with plastic
patches in order to protect the Egyptian cotton from all forms of mixing and
contamination.
• Technical supervising and controlling in the ginning mills by inspecting all
delivered sacs once more and excluding mixed, off-type, dampened and
contaminated sacs and taking all the required technical & legal procedures, then
following up stacking seed-cotton sacs in homogenous lots according to its grade.
• Follow up the technical procedures performed to the dampened seed-cotton sacs to
adjust the excess moisture content with the purpose of maintaining physical and
technical properties of Egyptian cotton.
• Supervising ginning operations that include gin stand adjustment in order to get rid
of trash as possible, avoiding seed crashing, eleminating neps formation, protecting
lint cotton from contamination and adjusting the moisture content of the ginned
lint, supervising baling and covering, bale approving by marking then showing
variety, CATGO’s name and lot No. to facilitate its handling in addition to
supervising bale weighing.
• Monitoring all the technical processes related to cotton preparation to be directly
exported from up country ginneries or by supervising farfara process done to lint
cotton in order to increase its homogenity and excluding contaminants and trash in
ginning and pressing mills.
• The aforementioned procedures that avoid through treatments during cleaning seed
and lint cotton which gave the Egyptian cotton its advantage of textile and apparel
durability as the Egyptian cotton fibers are not exposed to stress during its handling
stages starting from picking till ginning and pressing.
6
• The previous procedures provide a relative advantage to Egyptian long and extra
long cotton dealers in comparison to cotton with similar properties around the
world, and therefore keeping the significant reputation of the Egyptian cotton in the
world markets along the years.
• CATGO undergoes drawing samples from all lint cotton lots to measure its fiber
characterestics on the modern HVI, and issuing the related recognized certificates.
CATGO’s labs are equipped with updated instruments for measuring fiber length,
length uniformity, strength, elongation, color and trash, also testing micronaire
reading and maturity, nep testing instrument Nep Tester, trash testing instruments,
in addition to stickness testing instrument H2SD. CATGO modernized its labs and
equiped them by installing the most updated instrument (HVI 1000) where
CATGO is taking procedures to get the ISO 17025 for all it’s labs .
• The instruments are being adjusted and calibrated according to international
standards, CATGO participates in Bremen round tests every three months.
• CATGO undertakes drawing cotton samples from 10 % of the lot bales for
performing the arbitration by sworn experts on lint cotton (first instance, appeal
and counter appeal) and issuing arbitration certificates for all cotton lint lots
showing the variety and grade that are certified locally and internationally.
• Also drawing samples from all cotton bales according to the standard technical
procedures recommended by ASTM for performing moisture regain testing using
the most updated electronic ovens , the standard moisture regain percent is 8.5 % of
the dry weight according to the international agreement signed in Milan, Italy
1938.
• CATGO’s certificates are fully computerized, locally and internationally
recognized.
7
Every year CATGO conducts researches and studies related to cotton
among them:
1. Study the trends of Egyptian cotton varieties and strains grown in all
districts in cotton cultivating governorates to assess the degree of
variability in technological properties within varieties in different
growing locations to be available for decision makers, exporters and
spinners.
2. CATGO serves all cotton sectors, trading, exporting, ginning, and
spinning through its International Cotton Trainning Center (ICTC)
that trains technicians and experts to be qualified to work in different
cotton sectors.
3. Also CATGO runs an Information & Documentation center (IDC) that
gathers all data and information related to different cotton issues
locally and internationally then analyses and publishs weekly, monthly
and yearly issues which distributed to all concerned bodies.
4. All technical procedures and regulations done by CATGO,
supervision, following up handling and technical processing of cotton,
applying the related law is aiming to insure the purity of lint cotton,
prevent mixing, deterioration and contamination to maintain the well
known reputation of the Egyptian cotton in the international market
and to create new markets in the consuming countries.