Textile mills hopeful of better cotton season

With the commencement of a new cotton season from October 1, the textile industry is hopeful of not only availability of adequate quantity and stabilisation of prices of cotton soon but also improvement in quality.

Ravi Sam, chairman of Southern India Mills’ Association, said the industry has given a master plan to the Ministry to improve the cotton sector, starting from the seed level.

“We agree that there should be a mandatory cess that can be used to encourage better agronomy practices. The SIMA will look at a pilot project as an industry initiative,” he said. Better agronomy practices can increase production 20 % to 30 % and the number of seed varieties should be brought down. There are nearly 2,000 seeds now.

The next focus should be on ginning of cotton. The ginning units should get five star rating and should also use RFID code for cotton bales.

Another area of thrust should be on reducing contamination level in cotton to nil and trash content to less than 2.5 %. Textile mills are currently investing in imported machinery to reduce trash level and spending to remove the contamination.

J. Thulasidharan, president of Indian Cotton Federation, said cotton arrivals have picked up. The Textile Ministry has constituted a committee that will look at ways to improve the quality of Indian cotton and promote Kasturi cotton. The committee has has two meetings so far. The Textile Minister has also persuaded the Ministry of Chemical and Fertilizers to ask fertiliser companies to use coloured bags instead of white bags to pack fertilisers. This will make it easier for textile mills to remove polypropylene waste from cotton. For reducing trash content, there should be standards.

The cotton crop for the current season that will end in September next year is expected to be good (365 to 370 lakh bales of production). The quality is also said to be good. “Indian cotton prices are still higher than international prices and domestic textile mills are not finding it viable to buy cotton,” he said. Cotton prices are at about ₹70,000 a candy at present and is expected to reduce by another ₹ 6,000 or so.