SIMA tells textiles minister to brand Indian cotton items

The Southern India Mills’ Association (SIMA) has sought Union textiles minister Smriti Irani's intervention for cleaner cotton and branding of Indian cotton items.

In a representation to the minister, SIMA has urged empowerment of Cotton Corporation of India (CCI) to enforce certain regulations and discipline to curb malpractices adopted by certain ginners.

The poor ginning practices adopted by the ginners has made Indian cotton varieties to come under the list of top 10 highly contaminated and seed coat (trash) content in the world as per the Annual Cotton Contamination Survey, conducted by International Textile Manufacturers’ Federation (ITMF). 

The spinning sector and the farmers have been suffering during the last few years, as some of the ginners were mixing cotton waste in the virgin cotton, producing cotton with high trash content, and adding water to increase the lint weight, thus, affecting the value realization and quality of the final products, the survey said.

"The cotton waste price trend prevailed during the last few years indicate that the waste price steeply increased from the beginning of cotton season as the ginners procure waste cotton for adulteration. Such practices exponentially increase the short fibre content affecting the value realisation, productivity and quality of the yarn," stated P Nataraj, SIMA chairman in the representation.

Appreciating the efforts taken by the minister for bringing quality norms especially for gin-out ratio, trash content, moisture content and weight loss, apart from the regular quality parameters like staple length and micronaire value, SIMA has proposed few interventions to make Indian cotton world-class in terms of quality.

Few of the suggestions include periodical inspection by CCI in the ginning factories and take necessary action on the factories adopting malpractices, make textile committee to have periodical audits and recognise three to five star rated ginning factories and allocation of funds to create HVI cotton testing facilities in all the major cotton centres, as already recommended by Cotton Advisory Board.