Spinner's Viewpoint

Bob Hale


 
ABSTRACT

American Cotton Growers is the Textile Division of Plains Cotton Cooperative Association, a 20,000 farmer owned marketing cooperative, headquartered in Lubbock, Texas. The textile plant in nearby Littlefield produces 45,000,000 square yards annually of heavyweight indigo dyed, blue denim primarily for Levi Strauss.

In 1960 Emerson Tucker, of our company, began working with Glen Witts of Motion Controls, Inc., on a line for instrument testing of cotton. In 1974-75, immediately prior to the plant startup, we developed our computerized system for the selection and blending of cotton. We have now used 1,000,000 bales of West Texas cotton, each and every bale having been selected and blended by HVI data. Interestingly, we have never known at the plant the grade of any bale of cotton. I know from looking we run anything from B.G. to Middling in the same blend, a practice quite uncommon in the textile industry.

HVl has made possible for us the merging of West Texas cotton, open-end spinning, and the strict fabric strength requirements of Levi Strauss into a successful operation. HVI testing is absolutely essential to our operation. It is the only game in town for us, but we must learn to plan the game better. Now when we process two cotton blends with the same HVI data, we should see no difference in manufacturing operations ... we do. Simply stated, the more we know about cotton, the better we can blend it for improved manufacturing.



Reprinted from Proceedings: 1989 Beltwide Cotton Production Conference pg. 100
©National Cotton Council, Memphis TN

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Document last modified Sunday, Dec 6 1998