Shortage of quality cotton revisits yarn industry

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

At present, the weakest link in cotton production is 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 Indian dependence on imported cotton is reduced by improving the quality of domestic ELS cotton, whose requirement is likely to increase to 10 lakh bales.

This increase is due to a rise in spinning capacity and also due to the under spinning of ELS cotton due to its shortage.

Although the Indian 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'.

Ind hails abolition of textile committee cess

The repealing of the 0.5 per cent textile committee cess, which was introduced in 1963 to fund activities like mandatory pre-shipment quality inspection, has a come as long awaited relief to the textile industry.

Vijay Venkataswamy, chairman, SIMA, said that the textile ministry has been seeking abolition of the cess for many years. The cess collected was deposited into the Consolidated Fund of India and only a part of this was released back to the committee to meet its expenditure.

It was decided to abolish the cess long back but the decision was pending with the finance ministry. The industry, while welcoming the end of the cess, has requested the ministry to remove textiles from the purview of the Essential Commodities Act as there is no dearth of cotton today. By coming under the Act, cotton spinning mills are forced to pack 40 per cent of their production in the hank form for the use in handloom sector.

Hank is a definite length of textile material that varies according to the material, say 1 hank of cotton is 840 yards and for wool it is 560 yards.