Cotton Seed Distributors - Web on Wednesday

Rene van der Sluijs, CSIRO Textile Technologist, discusses overseas mills perception of Australian cotton 

You might like to say a few words about some of the work you have been doing for a recent road show you have been doing with fibre quality. I guess firstly you have looked at a number of parameters for Australian cotton and compared those and asked end users what they like about Australian cotton. Can you elaborate on what they actually do see are the good points about Australian Cotton?

Yes, I think genuinely they think that Australian cotton is certainly is seen as a very quality fibre but there have been over the years there have been some negative comments and really this project was raised to find out what the perceptions and needs are of the spinners and basically it was found that the Australian cotton although seen as a very good quality fibre there are some issues which need some addressing. Mainly, the high micronaire values over the last two to three seasons, NEPS and short fibre content. 

So they are the issues that they dislike, what are some of the things that they actually like about Australian cotton?

They like the Australian cotton obviously, Australian cotton is very low in contamination. Trash, colour, grade and length was certainly a lot of the positive aspects about Australian cotton. 

What are the comparisons being made against Australian cotton?  

To the growers, Australian cotton is basically being compared to the cottons that the mills are using which is mainly cotton from America, Zimbabwe, China which are the major growers. 

And how do they compare against Australian cotton, what are there strengths and weaknesses?

The strengths of the Zimbabwean cotton and the Chinese cotton is that they are hand picked so that means that they have got proportionary low NEPS and short fibre content. SJV cotton is really the cotton which is the strongest, seems to be the strongest and the longest cotton and Australian cotton sort of does compare favourably to some of them but some of the properties we certainly are lacking specifically in NEPS and short fibre content. 

What would be the reasons for our poorer performance with regard to those particular parameters?

The higher micronaire values, that is obviously due to the dry conditions over the last two to three years has certainly affected the micronaire. NEPS and short fibre content have been issues with Australian cotton for a number of years although we have improved on that. The main thing I think is the 90% of NEPS and short fibre content is mainly attributed to maturity and that certainly is something that we need to look at and cotton that is immature will tend to cause NEPS and short fibre content when it is mechanically manipulated. For example in the ginning process. 

Could you highlight some of the things that we could do as an industry to improve some of those deficits in our quality?

I think one of the first things that we should perhaps look at is to get some consistency in our fibre results. Over the last few years there has been a very big variation which we really should look at. I would assume that on a variety and breeding side of things the breeders could have a look at that which I am sure they are doing and also I think the other issue is the ginning issue. We are looking at ways of perhaps ginning our cotton differently and also looking at re-developing the gins that we have currently in Australia. 

Australian cotton normally does quite well with regard to contamination but I noticed in your talk one of the issues that the end users highlighted was the fact dew, or the covering of the hessian bags. Any comments on what might be able to be done to improve that?

I believe that the industry have looked many years ago to replace the hessian bags with cotton bags but that was a price issue and I think that this year or certainly in the near future the industry will have a look at that again to see what we can do to improve on that and certainly hessian bags, the use of hessian bags is probably not suitable.

Further Information:  Robert Eveleigh, John Marshall,  Craig McDonald or David Kelly