S
ri Venkata Siva Parvathi Spinning Mills in Guntur, India, specializes in the production
of combed ring yarns of a count Ne 60. Trumac DK 780 cards — from Ahmedabad, India-based Trumac
Engineering Co. Pvt. Ltd., a joint venture between India-based A.T.E. and Germany-based Trützschler
GmbH & Co. KG — operate in the mill. The rest of the installation also is modern. Like many
other spinning mills in Guntur and the surrounding area, cotton is supplied by a dedicated ginning
plant, in this case, located on the other side of the road. This yields the first advantage
straight away: There is no need to press the cotton into bales.
Precleaning is carried out using hand-operated drums. The heavy particles falling through
the grates – mostly residues of seeds with adherent fibers – are processed separately to produce an
inferior quality for coarse rotor yarns.
Staff costs are of little
consequence. The quality demands on the cotton are very high, and electrical energy is expensive.
Those basic conditions suddenly make an old ginning technique seem sensible.
In the ginning plant of Maddali Giridhar Rao, approximately 45 metric tons of cotton can be
processed per day. Because the output is approximately 33 percent, 15 metric tons of cotton are
processed per day. Of that total, the company’s own spinning mill needs 4 metric tons per day, and
the rest is sold to local customers. Depending on the season, the company operates one or two
10-hour shifts.
Foreign matter and coarse impurities are removed by hand.
The machinery in the ginning plant
consists of two precleaners and 18 Platt double roller gins dating from 1900. Their age is clearly
apparent from the outside, but the actual working components, which have been refined and optimized
increasingly over the course of time, come from specialists in India. This prompts a productivity
comparison with current gin technology: A modern saw gin in the United States has an output that is
more than 60 times greater. However, a quality comparison clearly favors the old ginning system.
The cotton, which emerges from the gins at a rate of just 40 kilograms per hour (kg/h), is
virtually trash- and nep-free. A modern saw gin, operating at around 2,400 kg/h, cannot match
this.
The cleaned fibers are packed in bags and delivered to the spinning mills.
The traditional cotton from the
region around Guntur is the type MCU 5. It is superbly suited to the yarn count of Ne 60 that is
the norm there. In conjunction with the historic gin technology, it is unbeatable. During a recent
visit, the current price was 72 rupees per kilogram (RS/kg). A comparable Giza 86 from Egypt, which
is also used for Ne 60 yarns, was around 120 RS/kg.
The separated seeds are transported via an underfloor feed screw to a collecting pit that
passes into an oil mill nearby for the production of food-grade oil.
There also is an advantage for the
national economy. An Indian ginning plant of this kind provides employment for several dozen staff
and requires less of the scarce energy available.
Editor’s Note: Hermann Selker is head of marketing for Germany-based Trützschler GmbH & Co.
KG.
July/August 2006