The Hindu Business Line : Cotton users seek change in fertiliser bags colour

ONE of the serious contaminants affecting cotton used by the textile industry is traced to the synthetic fertiliser bags used by the farmers and the notorious contaminant is the polypropylene thread of the fertiliser bags that are white in colour.

To tackle this, the cotton development agencies have appealed to the fertiliser companies to change the colour of the polypropylene fertiliser bags to any colour other than white.

Cotton growers use the empty polypropylene fertiliser bags to collect and store the seeded cotton (kapas) harvested from their farms before they are transported.

While doing so, some of the polypropylene threads of these bags get mixed up with cotton and it is difficult to detect these threads, being white in colour, while the cotton is sent for further processing namely spinning as cotton yarn.

The simple admixture of cotton and white polypropylene actually leads to huge claim on the spinners from overseas yarn buyers as the polypropylene threads once got into the cotton yarn can't be bleached or dyed, thereby causing serious defects to the yarn and subsequently in the cotton fabrics made out of that yarn.

Spelling out the problems faced by this contamination, the Confederation of Indian Textile Industry's Cotton Development and Research Association (CITI-CDRA) Standing Committee Chairman, Mr P.D. Patodia, said the association had taken up this issue with the Ministry of Chemicals and Fertilisers so that the fertiliser manufacturers are asked to use only coloured bags for packing fertilisers.

Already, Godavari Fertilisers and Chemicals Ltd of Secunderabad and Paradeep Phosphates of Bhubaneswar have switched over to the use of coloured bags for fertiliser packing, he said in a statement, adding that he expected other fertiliser producers to follow suit.