The Hindu Business Line : A human touch that ensures purity of ginned cotton in a mechanised world

ALL-MECHANISATION may be a buzzword in manufacturing or product processing. But, for a company engaged in processing agricultural produce in rural Tamil Nadu, going manual still makes business sense, as long as it helps achieve its ultimate objective of giving pure product to its clients.

The Pollachi-based Sri Santhalakshmi Mills Pvt Ltd (SLM) has moored its business philosophy of ensuring purity of ginned cotton it sells on its dependence on hand processing of raw cotton, though sophisticated machineries are available for high volume ginning operations.

The company has made ripples in ginned cotton marketing by ensuring deliveries of `hand-graded' cotton to eliminate the contaminants associated with cotton fibre, especially the high priced super-fine cotton varieties such as `Suvin'.

A three-stage manual grading in kappas (seed) cotton has earned the company kudos from renowned clientele of textile mills, both within the country and abroad.

Links with Japan

SLM supplies contamination-free extra long staple (ELS) cotton to textile majors such as Century Textiles, Arvind Mills, Vardhman Spinning and General Mills, Premier group and Lakshmi Mills.

The company also exports ELS cotton varieties, particularly the Suvin, to Japan, Switzerland, China, Indonesia and Bangladesh and is closely associated with Japanese institutional trading houses such as Sumitomo and Mitsubishi which buy ginned Suvin cotton from SLM.

Besides Suvin, the other ELS cotton varieties SLM supplies include DCH-32, TCH and MCU-5.

While most sophisticated ginning machinery could help achieve higher volume of production of ginned cotton, naked eyes and bare-hands are the only fool-proof mechanism to eliminate contamination of cotton either due to varietal mix or foreign matter mix-up. Hence, the company is determined to continue with `hand grading of cotton' by engaging a large number of women in the pre-ginning screening of kappas. "The hand-grading also ensures that the naturally formed fibres are not damaged unlike the grading done through machines," says Mr M. Appuswamy, Managing Director of SLM.

Women workers at SLM's ginnery manually pick the immature fibre, such trashes as broken plastic material, polypropylene or hair that get mixed up with the harvested cotton prior to feeding the gauge rollers that are used to grading kappas size wise. The hand-graded cotton fetches an additional price of Rs 2,000 a candy (356 kgs) compared to the machine-graded ginned cotton.

Challenges

The penchant for marketing pureline ELS cotton varieties for the five-decade old SLM has brought its own challenges of late.

The gradual decline in the yield of `Suvin' cotton through the 1990s - which fell from a peak production of 30,000 bales to as low as 400 bales a year - had set the alarm bells ringing for SLM forcing it to work on specific plans to improve the yield. Besides fall in yield, the variety also saw deterioration in its fibre characteristics such as variations in micronair, strength and fibre length.

"We have resorted to raising `Suvin' on contract farming basis. Initially, we leased 2,500 acres on contract in the traditional super-fine cotton growing tracts in Athur (Valappadi), Rasipuram, Dharmapuri (Papparapatti and Palakode) by offering guaranteed buyback. Today, we have tied up exclusively for `Suvin' cultivation on about 5,000 acres and another 5,000 acres for other ELS varieties like DCH-32 and TCH-213 under contract farming. Besides Tamil Nadu, SLM has tied up with the farmers in Karnataka's Shimoga, Kadur and Arisekere cotton tracts to raise the ELS cotton varieties including Suvin," said Mr Appuswamy.

To ensure quality planting, SLM started commercial distribution of its own seeds `Suvin Gold' produced by its in-house R&D wing `Nandhine Seeds'

"Japanese home textile market has kicked up demand for ELS cotton like Suvin," said Mr A. Lakshmanan, Director of Ace Tex, the 100% export oriented spinning unit belonging to SLM, which also supplies finer count yarn spun out of ELS cotton.

SLM exports 2,000 bales of Suvin cotton and 2,500 bales of other ELS cottons annually.

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