Lack of good quality cotton bugs yarn traders

The cotton textile industry is facing a major shortage of good quality cotton with very little contamination.

At present, the weakest link in the cotton production was the lack of home grown extra long staple cotton (ELS). This has been the traditional problem with the Indian industry since independence, which has been partially overcome but growing demand is setting the industry back.

India produces about 5.3 lakh bales (1 bale is 170 kg) of ELS cotton as against the requirement of 8 lakh bales, thereby creating a shortfall of around 3 lakh bales. So, the need of the hour is to see that India's dependence on imported cotton is reduced by improving the quality of domestic ELS cotton.

The demand of ELS cotton is likely to increase to 10 lakh bales due to a rise in spinning capacity and also due to the under spinning of ELS cotton due to its shortage.

Although the textile industry takes pride in its capacity to produce super fine cotton yarn, where the value addition is high, DCH which is Indian ELS cotton, has been a poor substitute for imported varieties like Egyptian cotton (GIZA) and American cotton (PIMA).

The deterioration over the years of its (DCH) fibre characteristics like strength of the fibre (measured in gtex) and micronaire has made it difficult to spin super fine counts of reasonable parameters.

Micronaire is a critical cotton fibre quality that is harder to visualise than other properties like staple length or fibre strength.

"It is more influenced by weather than just about any fibre characteristics. It describes both the maturity and fineness of the cotton fibre and the end quality is partially determined by this," says Vijay Venkatswamy, chairman, South Indian Mills association (Sima) and an expert on cotton.

The uniformity ratio which shows how uniform the fibres are, is 44 per cent for indigenous cotton compared to 49 per cent in imported varieties. Reduced uniformity ratio leads to nep or imperfections in thickness of fibre.

The industry fears that the shortfall in super fine cotton might lead to its exit from its traditional and lucrative market. In the global yarn trade, India has a trade share of 25 per cent out of which 40 per cent is accounted for by super fine cotton.

The industry also feels that the prices of super fine cotton might go up due to the US government's step to revise the subsidy given to ELS cotton growers, mainly PIMA, in the US from the 'net landed north European price' to 'spot prices'.

"So the reaction to all these could be expected in other ELS varieties globally like Egyptian, Sudan Barakat and CIS cotton varieties, which in turn might firm up their prices," said Vijay Venkatswamy.

For increasing the domestic production of ELS cotton, it is imperative that the interaction between the seed producing scientists, farmers, breeders and industry is increased.

"For this R&D must be enhanced and should be able to address the problems that the farmers are facing in cotton cultivation," said Prabhakar Rao, managing director, Nuziveed Seeds. The government must also check the supply of spurious seeds to farmers and encourage them not to reuse seeds beyond a point.

"To produce quality, spinning with domestic cotton alone is not sufficient. We need cotton with 35 gtex (fibre strength), 49 per cent uniformity in fibre and micronaire ranging from 3.7 to 4.2," Venkatswamy added.