Cotton

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Cotton seed storage delivers for growers

Truck drivers are more efficient.

Cotton can be ginned continually.

Growers have the option to store cotton seed – or not.

And, for the 40 growers ginning their cotton, they can – for the first time – take control of when they sell their seed to maximise its value.

It’s amazing what impact infrastructure can have on a business – this is all thanks to the installation of a shed.

But it’s not just any shed.

It’s a long-awaited and carefully planned cotton seed shed.

An Entegra structure, it has the capacity to store up to 22,000 tonnes of seed and access for at least two trucks to load at the same time, with the flexibility to also store other commodities in the cotton ginning off-season.

This shed, changes the economics for cotton seed sales for customers of North West Ginning at Moree in New South Wales and could even attract new business.

North West Ginning Director and local cotton grower Lyndon Mulligan said the gin’s ability to store cotton seed gives growers choice and more marketing options.

“It’s now up to the grower to decide how much risk they’ll take,” he said.

“They can market their seed straight away, with no risk, or wait and see what the market holds.”

Growers who gin with North West Ginning own their seed.

The gin facilitates the sale of their seed for them – or in some cases – the growers themselves collect their seed from the gin.

But not all gins operate this way. Instead, some gins purchase seed from the growers, store it and sell it at a later date, depending on price.

Before the Entegra shed was erected, North West Ginning required growers to sell or collect cotton seed before their cotton was ginned due to the gins’ lack of storage.

Now, if a grower wishes to store their seed at the gin, the grower pays a storage fee to the gin until they decide to sell their seed.

Lyndon said seed storage is viewed by the gin as an “add-on”.

“It’s the lint the growers are interested in,” he explained.

“But the general rule of thumb is the seed covers the cost of the ginning, some years it goes the other way as well.”

Food from fibre

Cotton seed is a valuable co-product of cotton production and the ginning process.

It makes up about half the weight of the picked cotton and is mostly used to make cotton seed oil, according to Cotton Australia.

The industry’s peak body said one tonne of cotton seed yields about 200 kilograms of oil, 500kg of cotton seed meal and 300kg of cotton hulls.

There’s more than 50 million tonnes of cotton seed produced globally each year but less than 1 per cent of this total is used to plant cotton.

Cotton seed can be crushed to make cotton seed oil – most commonly used for cooking – or soap, emulsifiers, cosmetics, pharmaceuticals, rubber, paint, water proofing agents and candles, according to Cotton Australia.

A co-product of cotton seed oil-extraction is cotton seed meal, a protein supplement, commonly fed to beef and dairy cattle as part of a ration.

Alternatively, cattle producers can also feed whole cotton seed to ruminants to provide protein, energy and fibre – the latter from the cotton seed hulls.

Whole cotton seed is a suitable supplement for stock grazing low quality feed such as cereal stubble or mature, frosted or drought affected tropical pasture, according to the NSW Department of Primary Industries Primefact.

This NSW DPI fact sheet also explained that combined with other feeds, whole cotton seed can be used as part of a drought ration.

Lyndon said some North West Ginning growers run cattle and choose to use their seed as a feedlot ration – or in times of drought – to sustain their herds.

Starting with the best

North West Ginning is an independent cotton gin, owned by two families, which supply about 15 per cent of the gins’ cotton.

The rest of the fibre processed at the gin comes from 40 growers.

The gin was established in 1990 and right from the start, it was focused on quality.

“Obviously being a customer-focused gin, not linked to any merchant, they needed to have a real focus on customer quality,” Lyndon explained.

“The directors at the time decided they needed to get ISO9001 accreditation (an international quality management standard) so they could give customers, or anyone else who wanted to gin, the opportunity to have the best product that could come through from the gin.”

Improving operational efficiency

Wayne Griswold has been General Manager of North West Ginning for the past 12 years.

He said the seed shed is an extension of the gins’ existing operation and has also delivered operational benefits.

“We’d previously had to have trucks here to pick up seed when we had seed because we didn’t have storage facilities,” he said.

“On a couple of occasions we actually had to shut down our processing plant because we couldn’t get trucks to take the seed away.

“This shed allows us to continually gin at all times. If we didn’t (gin at all times) we needed security. Now we have people here loading seed trucks and bale trucks.”

Ginning generally runs from April until August, but in recent years seasons have finished in October and as late as December.

Staff retention has been another bonus of ginning continually throughout the season.

Wayne said many gin staff are casual, seasonal workers and they like the consistency of the work.

He said having to shut down because it wasn’t possible to move seed from the gin, always came with the risk of losing these staff.

Now, there’s so much storage at North West Ginning that the cotton seed shed is even used to house additional cotton bales when the bale shed has run out of space.

Wayne said there’s also an opportunity to store grain in the shed during the ginning offseason.

There’s no shortage of “options” when it comes to the new cotton seed shed.

But the most fulfilling – and important – has been the option, or choice, that storing cotton seed has given the local cotton growers.

 

Breakout

North West Ginning by numbers

 

  • An average of 110,000 cotton bales ginned each year for the past decade
  • 197,500 cotton bales ginned last year???
  • 213,000 cotton bales ginned (when?)
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