India’s Cotton Sector Needs to Manage Contaminants to Enhance Competitiveness
July 10, 2022 During my recent trip to India amidst a stormy cotton situation, I have been fortunate to discuss with stakeholders in the entire cotton value chain how to enhance the competitiveness of the cotton sector.
Apart from market dynamics, factors such as farm productivity and managing cotton contamination need priority attention. Plastic bale wrap is a major issue facing the global cotton sector.
Indian textile spinners are having good control of plastic, vegetable matter, and metal contaminants at the spinning level due to cotton contamination detection systems.
Nestling Technologies in Coimbatore, India, has been a market leader in delivering cotton cleaning technologies to spinning mills. Normally, this technology is employed in the blowroom stage in spinning, where white and colored plastic contaminants can be traced and ejected. My discussions with textile industry people aimed at focusing attention on plastic contamination at gin and farm levels.
Nestling Technologies Executives Showing Plastic Contaminants in Cotton (Photo: Dr. Seshadri Ramkumar)
Chandrasekaran Somasundaram, Managing Director of Nestling Technologies, agrees with the need for contamination cleaning at the gin level and insists that stakeholders like farmers, ginners, mills, and machinery makers must come on a single platform to manage this critical issue. Machinery makers have technology that can be quickly adapted at the gin level for control of plastic and other contaminants.
A discussion with Velmurugan Shanmugam, General Manager of Jayalakshmi Textiles, a fine count spinning mill in Aruppukkottai, India, underscores the importance of having cotton devoid of plastic contaminants at the entry level.
“Mills will be interested in paying a premium of Rupees 1500 to 2000 per candy (356 Kgs) for contamination free cotton,” he said. “Leaving a small porting of plastic in cotton in the early processing stages in a mill can be corrected only at the autoconer stage, which is a costly affair for the industry. Plastic-free cotton can enhance the productivity of the autoconer by 5%, which will be a blessing for the industry.”
Price volatility, tight supply, and moderation of demand for textiles pushes the cotton textile chain to be competitive. With cotton prices riding high, the industry must look for cost savings and quality enhancements. Plastic free cotton and better methods to catch plastics at gin level should receive due attention.
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