IF YOU ARE a grower that has a higher quality of cotton, how do you capture the added value of that quality? According to Dr. Carl Anderson, Texas economist, buyers often look for volume when shopping for high quality cotton. That is why he suggest that growers separate and pool their better grade cotton.
"There is real focus on a nice white cotton with the 11, 21, and 31 color grades, " says Anderson. "The foreign buyers are looking for longer staple in the 35, 36, and 37 range. They want long and white cotton.
"The international standard for strength is 30 to 32 grams/tex range and a mid-range for micronaire from around 4.1 to 4.6. The 41 color, 34 staple is really not sought after in the international market. It is a trouble-some USDA base grade at this time.
"My perspective is a grower who produces this quality cotton needs to work within his system to try to isolate that cotton from other cotton, ideally by variety. The more bales of the same variety they can pool, the better the bidding they will get in the market place, because the buyer can purchase larger volumes.
"Whether you have poorer quality cotton or high quality cotton, the best approach is getting that cotton in front of as many buyers as possible, because the more buyers as possible, because the more buyers there are, the more the competition to purchase the cotton. Also, when you are dealing with a merchant, be aware of what is happening in the marketplace. If you know that you have a fiber quality that is in demand in the market, then you have leverage when negotiating."
Beltwide Cotton Cooperative, a cotton pool managed by Weil Brothers, based in Montgomery, AL, is pooling growers' cotton from across the belt. Austin Wade, who manages the Southeast and Mid-South cotton pools, agrees that volume makes cotton more attractive to buyers.
"Volume helps us when we are dealing with a country like Turkey of China that wants a large quantity of a particular quality," says Wade. "If you are dealing with one state or area, it might be hard to pull together that amount of cotton in a short amount of time. But because we are a pool, we can pull together the better quality cotton as it is ginned."
According to Wade, his growers are producing a higher quality cotton because their pool rewards better quality. "Our growers are producing better quality cotton because we are paving full USDA premiums to our growers. They are growing to capture these premiums.
"We are experienced exporters and sell into every market whether it be low, medium or high quality. For out growers who do produce a better grade, high staple and better strength, they are getting an immediate premium when they deliver to us, so it in the best interest to produce a finer quality."
In California, Beltwide Cotton Cooperative is working with growers who have organized the San Joaquin Valley (SJV) Quality Cotton Association. The quality association was organized in 1998 around a group of growers willing to commit themselves totally to producing quality cotton and to provide a mechanism to differentiate themselves in the marketplace. They follow a strict protocol to ensure good quality and have reached out to the textile community to communicate their quality standards.
The group has registered a trademark - SLV Quality Cotton ' that is on every association bale, and it has licensed Weil Brothers-Cotton Incorporated/Beltwide Cotton Cooperative to be it's exclusive marketing representative.
An Innovative Relationship
In Courtland, AL, ginner Bobby Greene has established an ongoing relationship with Parkdale Textile mills to deliver his customers' cotton to the mill based upon their quality requirements. He says the relationship requires that he pay closer attention to the quality of cotton he sends to the mill.
"It is very important when we have 60% plus of our cotton going directly to the mill that we be contamination free," says Green. "We spend a lot of time managing the issue from a grower education standpoint. We have people trained to identify contamination, who shut down the gin when we see the potential for a problem. Then we clean out the equipment and segregate those bales, which may be affected."
Green says the technology his gin utilizes and the way the equipment is operated is driven by the influence on fiber quality. "We will not install a new piece of machinery or technology without first answering the question - what are we doing to fiber quality?," he says. "If it degrades, we won't use it. Fortunately, this is becoming more of a point of awareness for the whole ginning industry."
For Parkdale Mills, Greene stores cotton based on color and micronaire, which the mill uses to determine laydowns. Servico Gin, uses the Intelligin System, which analyzes fiber quality characteristics as the cotton is being ginned. This allows Green to gin the cotton only as much as needed, preserving fiber quality.
Steady Improvement
While fiber quality has been intensely focused upon in recent years, the trend toward improvement is ongoing as the seed companies are introducing new varieties that meet or exceed the international demand for fiber quality. As in the past, the industry has worked together to tackle the issue from the grower level all the way through to the mill.
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