GINNERS have made sizable investments — going by industry estimates — of about Rs5 billion to enhance capacity in recent years, but they continue to wait for faster growth in cotton output to fully capitalise on it.

Between fiscal years 2011 and 2013, around 50 new ginning factories came up, most of them in Sindh. And a number of mills have undertaken BMR projects to increase volume and quality of cotton ginning.

“But cotton production remains, by and large, stagnant,” laments Mr Nasim Usman, chairman of the Karachi Cotton Brokers Forum.

“Cotton production has never touched the 15 million-bale mark. The yearly average for the last three years is around 13 million bales. Against this, installed ginning capacity has risen to 20 million bales. So, unless output increases speedily, ginners cannot fully utilise their capacity.”

From 11.7 million bales in 2010-11 (when super floods hit the crop hard), cotton output soared to 14.8 million bales in 2011-12, but plunged to 12.9 million bales in 2012-13. This year, the estimated output looks set to cross 13.5 million bales, but cannot hit 14 million bales, according to the latest official forecast.

In 2011, 40 new ginning units were installed — 30 of them in Sindh — after the

State Bank offered an incentive package for this purpose. Twenty other units were in the pipeline, again mostly in Sindh, but that number is yet to be hit.

Two new ginning factories have recently been set up in Shahdadpur and Tando Adam (Sindh), industry sources say. A couple of new units have also been established in Punjab, particularly in and around Multan, according to executive member of Pakistan Cotton Ginners’ Association Chaudhry Iftikhar Ali Javed.

“But most ginners are frustrated with the low growth in cotton production, due to which they can’t even exploit existing installed capacity of ginning units.”

But on the other hand, as a result of BMR carried out in recent years by the ginning industry, around 200 units have increased ginning outturn — the ratio of lint to seed cotton produced by ginning — from 33 to 36 per cent, industry sources say.

They add that an equal number of ginning factories are also producing much finer quality of ginned cotton in terms of fiber length and strength than a couple of years ago.

“But if prices of lint cotton remain strong due to low production growth, similar improvements can’t be expected from all ginning mills [about 1,200 across Pakistan],” insists the owner of a leading mill in Multan.

Ginners also claim that after the super floods of 2010, establishment of new mills and refurbishment of others had sent a wake-up call to others, some of whom have since not only improved ginning outturn, but also managed to bring down their wastage level from the industry average of eight per cent to six per cent.

To achieve this, they replaced old parts of ginning mills with new or refurbished parts, which contained wastage by allowing faster and fuller ginning of cotton. The owner of one such mill in Sindh says he plans to import from the US specially designed new saw gins that reduce the amount of waste but retain more of the good fiber during the ginning process.

A cotton ginner in Multan says the Pakistan Engineering Council has the capability to help ginning machine manufacturers in Multan to come up with similar saw gins.

Meanwhile, some Punjab-based ginners, when reached over telephone, expressed pessimism about cotton growth prospects in their province, where it has been much slower than in Sindh.

“We met the Punjab governor last month and requested him to use his good office to allow imports of hybrid cotton seed. We think this alone can accelerate cotton production,” he told Dawn.

Pakistan’s per-hectare cotton yield for the last five years has averaged around 750kg, according to officials of the ministry of national food security and research. This is at least 40 per cent lower than that in India.

Sources in the Sindh agriculture department informed this writer that some cotton seed varieties, including hybrid seeds, have recently been released, which should help growers increase per-hectare yield of next year’s crop. They, however, gave no details.

Supported by the EU’s GSP Plus status, our textile exports have started showing significant growth. But its sustainability depends on a decent growth in the domestic cotton output.

“We need to increase cotton output by about two million bales per year to meet the additional demand for raw material from the textile industry,” a leading Sindh-based ginner says.

“Ginning mills don’t need to enhance capacity for at least two to three years if cotton output continues growing by two million bales a year. But the real issue is to ensure that we achieve this growth rate.”