In the financial year 2017, the yield of cotton produced in the country was estimated to be over 500 kilograms per hectare, up from about 415 kilograms per hectare in the fiscal year 2016. China, India and the United States of America are the top three countries where cotton is produced. Measuring the production of cotton in thousand metric tons, China produced 6,532 thousand metric tons and India produced 6,423 thousand metric tons of cotton in the past year, whereas the USA had a production of 3,553 thousand metric tons.
One bale weighs 170 kgs in India, and it contains impurities like trash and foreign contaminations along with short fibres which cannot be spun. The spinning of the yarn consists of cleaning, laying parallel the fibres side by side removing the noil, short fibres. The process is named carding and combing.
For super-combed yarn, the recovery is approximately 70%.
170×70%= 119 kgs yarn
Then yarn is converted to fabric with weaving or knitting. Where recovery is 98%, the loss is fibre fly, dust or invisible.
119×98%= 117 kgs grieve fabric
The next is wet processing where the recovery is 93%; the loss is called scouring loss which is in the form of removing natural impurities like natural protein, wax, cotton kitties, etc.
117×93%= 108 kgs
The meters per kg depends on( linear meters)
- GSM (Grams per square meter)
- The width of the fabric
Knitted fabrics are approximately 3.5 meters/ kg (gsm 160 and width 65 inches)
Henceforth we will get
Fabric in meters from one bale of 170 kgs =
108×3.5= 378 meters
Which is sufficient for
550 t-shirts small size
432 t-shirts medium size
325 t-shirts large to xl size.
Fibre to the fabric. How much fabric is extracted from one bale of cotton?
