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Today, said Professor Krause, the average time spent to produce 1 kg (2.2 lb.) of yarn is about 5 minutes. To produce 100 m (110 yds.) of woven fabrics takes roughly 50 minutes. The cotton processing section of the textile industry was now adopting automation techniques most rapidly. Manual labour was fast being replaced by capital-intensive high-productivity machinery.
For the time being a mill fully automated from bale to cone could not be realised economically, he continued, but the fully continuous process from the card to the non-woven cloth was technical- ly feasible and available. New techniques of break spinning technology offered a chance of increasing productivity in cotton spinning and also for the automation of spinning and winding as a continuous process.
SWITCHES IN SUPPLY.
Production of raw cotton is now estimated during the current season at some 52 million bales and supplies at over 74 million bales, The International Cotton Advisory Committee, however, has pointed out that important shifts in availabilities within the staple categories are obscured in the overall figures.
For example, medium long and long staple cottons are now much more abundant than in the previous season, while conversely those cottons of one-inch and less staple have declined sharply in volume. Most of the world export availabilities of short staple cotton are in the United States and Pakistan and supplies of purely American varieties were 35% down compared with last season.
In contrast, the longer staples in the United States increased in supply by 29% this season. Elsewhere virtually all the rise in cotton production in 1968/69 has been in areas producing predominently medium and long staples, notably in Brazil, Colombia, Iran, Mexico and Syria.
Latest consumption information shows no important change in the basic trends. Offtake in the United States during the first half of the season was nearly 9% below the similar period in the previous year, but the use of man-made fibres was up 25%.
Some gain is expected in consumption of cotton in Western Europe during the season and the offtake in Asia is still expanding. Japanese and South Korean mills are using cotton at a rate about 5% higher than in the early months last season.
The American cotton acreage programme for 1969/70 continues the price support payments and loans for participating farmers, but no longer provides for diversion payments and includes no requirements for diverted acreage. The loan rate is again 20.25 cents per lb. on the basis of middling one-inch but price support payments have been raised from 12.24 cents in the current season to 14.73 cents per lb.
MERGERS IN JAP MILLS.
Britain is not the only country where textile mergers are taking place. The Japanese industry bears some resemblance to the United Kingdom pattern, in that a number of large groupings have been carried out over the years, while there are also many small fragmented firms carrying out single-unit operations. -
Forecasts have been made that integration into bigger and stronger entities would follow and the latest amalgamation planned is one between Nippon Rayon (Nitiray), one of the seven leading syn- thetic fibre producers, and Nichibo, one of the nine largest spinning companies. The deal will take effect from the beginning of October.
This is the second big merger between textile producers in Japan in the last few years, the other being the merger of Toyobo and