In a bid to provide quality cotton and boosting the supply chain, the ITF (Indian Texpreneurs’ Federation) Cotton Team has showcased the “power of collective buying of cotton”.

From purchasing 1.85 lakh bales (of 170 kg) of cotton (on behalf of the 32 member mills that are partners to this consortium) during its first year of operation (2016-17), the ITF Cotton Team has doubled the volumes till date during the current cotton year to touch 3.8 lakh bales.

Quality awareness

“Our upcoming (2018-19) season target is to procure 4.5-5 lakh bales,” said Prabhu Damodaran, Secretary, ITF. Stating that the focus this year would be “contamination controlled cotton,” he said, “the quality of the Indian cotton is good, but it is spoilt due to wrong practices from farm to bale stage.”

ITF Cotton Team is on a mission to create awareness about the effects of contamination and its impact in further process. The Federation has released a short film on introduction of best practices in all possible areas.

Giving a copy of the video to the 64 ginners from Maharashtra, Telangana and Karnataka — who are now on a visit to the mills here — he said, “the trash content is now 3 per cent. There is scope for bringing it down further.”

Sourcing the fibre

Highlighting the benefits of collective buying, Damodaran said: “Members are able to share market information, get quality cotton as specified by each of the mills, avoid disputes such as weight shortage. There is payment security for ginners and round the year supply.”

To a query on how spinning mills source cotton, he said, “mills generally call 5-6 agents on a daily basis and based on the rate that the agent quotes, place the order. In the process, the trade gets driven by price. This partnership with ginners has helped the mill sector source the fibre to suit their requirement. Repeated orders with the select ginners has helped eliminate mistrust in the system. They visit the mills to understand our requirement. This helps address some ground realities.”

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