Indian Cotton (Shankar-6)

Shankar-6, MCU-5 & DCH-32 — the volume medium staple

India grows more cotton than any other country and sells it by variety name rather than by a national grade system, which is the first thing an importing mill has to get used to. Shankar-6 from Gujarat is the most traded and the effective benchmark — roughly 1-1/8 inch staple, micronaire 3.5 to 4.5, strength around 28 to 30 g/tex. MCU-5 from the southern states runs slightly longer and finer. DCH-32 is India's extra long staple, at 1-3/8 inch and above, grown in small volume and competing with Pima and Giza. Bengal Deshi and other short-staple Asiatic varieties serve coarse-count and non-woven uses. Classing is by HVI at private and CCI facilities rather than under a single government programme, so the identity of the tester and the merchant matters more than it does with American lint.

Buy Indian cotton where landed cost per kilo is the deciding metric and your spinning system tolerates some variability: open-end and coarse-to-medium count ring spinning, denim, home textiles, and any mill with the sorting and blending capability to work with mixed lots. It is consistently among the cheapest medium staple available and the volume is enormous. The honest caution is contamination and consistency. Much of the crop is hand-picked and stored in a fragmented supply chain, and Indian cotton has historically ranked poorly in the ITMF contamination survey — polypropylene, jute and hair baled with the lint, which only reveals itself as a fault in dyed fabric. A mill that has invested in contamination-clearing equipment can absorb that and capture the price advantage; one that has not should think carefully. CBIL brokers Indian cotton against variety, HVI classing, staple, micronaire, strength and trash, on FOB Mundra, Kandla and Tuticorin, CFR and CIF terms.