Exploring Priority Issues for the Cotton Sector
April 26, 2022 The supply-demand situation, soaring prices, quality, contamination aspects, and penetration into value-added sectors are priorities that need the attention of stakeholders of the cotton sector.
On Apr. 25, a team of key people from Bajaj Coneagle, LLC and its parent company Bajaj Steel Industries, Ltd. – a leading manufacturer of cotton ginning machinery – visited Lubbock to explore the current cotton sector’s situation and interact with industry people.
FROM LEFT: Lav Bajaj, Seshadri Ramkumar, Shankar Venkatachalam (Photo: Seshadri Ramkumar)
With cotton prices at higher levels, discussions focused on what’s next for the industry. Lav Bajaj, Business Director of Bajaj Steel Industries, noted that if the current drought conditions in the High Plains of Texas continue to persist, cotton yields are expected to suffer in the world’s leading cotton producing region, affecting the supply and demand situation.
Given such a tight supply situation, competition from synthetics will be high, which necessitates concerted efforts from all stakeholders in the industry. Recent input and calls to action by the Indian textile industry led to the Government of India suspending the import duty on cotton for a specified period.
The United States cotton sector has established a global name as a producer of consistent quality, primarily due to factors such as machine harvesting, mass scale production, educated producers, and the use of technology. This may not be feasible in other regions such as India and Africa where farmlands owned by single family farmers range from half an acre to ten acres, which influences the quality. The group from Bajaj Steel agreed and suggested that the Indian cotton sector should utilize existing resources such as grassroot level education, effective utilization of farm apps to follow good agronomy practices, and marketing.
Shankar Venkatachalam, President of Bajaj Coneagle, said efforts must focus on quality grades and seed variety selection. He also noted that it is time for India to look into saw gin revolution to help enhance quality and hence, yarn realization in spinning mills.
Agreeing with the current tight supply situation, mills will expect high quality cotton at a reasonable price, stated Velmurugan Shanmugam, General Manager of Jayalakshmi Textiles, which annually consumes about 7,000 tons of cotton and produces 4,800 tons of fine count cotton yarns. He noted that in countries like India, it is important that the government and the textile and cotton industries aim towards individual bale classification to achieve quality consistency and reliability.
In India, cotton is traded at the farm level based on length while mills conduct a thorough quality evaluation using HVI instrumentation, depending on the size and requirement of individual mills. The Bajaj team and Shanmugam agree that quality evaluation at the single bale level is needed.
Contamination at the gin level such as plastics, quality consistency, effective utilization of technology, and creating more awareness at the farm level should receive priority attention. More importantly, effective management decisions by the stakeholders, given the tight supply of cotton, will be the need of the hour for cotton purchasing and stocking decisions.
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