Cotton

CBIL brokers raw cotton lint and cotton yarn, connecting ginners, merchants and cooperatives with spinners and textile mills. Every cotton contract turns on the HVI classing sheet rather than on origin alone: upper half mean length, which sets the staple class from short through medium and long to extra long; micronaire, a combined fineness and maturity reading where 3.5 to 4.9 is the premium band and anything outside it is discounted; strength in grams per tex; uniformity index; and colour by reflectance and yellowness against the USDA grade ladder from Good Middling down through Strict Middling and Middling to Strict Low Middling. Leaf and trash content sit alongside. The quality issue that costs mills most money is none of those, however — it is contamination, the plastic, jute and hair that gets baled with the lint and only shows up as a fault in finished fabric. Prices reference the ICE Cotton No. 2 contract in US cents per pound, with the Cotlook A Index as the physical benchmark and origin differentials on top.