Fiber and Biopolymer Research Institute Texas Tech University, USAThe focus of the dominant international textile industries is on finer yarns and ring spinning. Therefore, textile mills emphasize cotton growths with fiber profiles adapted to this market (fibers that are long, uniform, mature, fine, strong, and with low contamination levels). At the same time, increasing labor costs in Asia, where most of the cotton spinning industry is located, are forcing spinning mills to consider potential alternative spinning technologies such as airjet or vortex spinning. If cotton could be adapted to these spinning technologies, its throughput would make it competitive with rotor spinning (faster than rotor). It could produce yarns competitive with ring-spun yarns in some market segments such as the 30Ne, which is the primarytarget market for U.S. cotton (the range of possible yarn counts is narrower than for ring spinning). However, because of poor fiber length distribution compared to synthetic fibers, cotton is not the fiber of choice in the airjet/vortex spinning market.The current solution to deal with this issue is to modify the distribution of fiber length with combing. The drawback is that it lowers mill throughput and increases waste, resulting in lower profits for the spinning mills. The Vortex or Airjet spinningindustry is emerging. This technology is an opportunity for U.S. cotton as ring spinning is not a viable option for the local transformation of the raw material because of labor costs.The cotton market is global and competitive. Long-term data show that cotton fiber is losing market shares to other staple fibers, but its consumption in pounds keeps increasing. Therefore, cotton must respond to industry needs in terms of price and quality.
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