At the National Cotton Council on Feb 15, the Packaging and Distribution Committee affirmed the current Council Policy and defeated motions by the ginning industry that would remove the elimination of these materials from the approved Bagging and Ties list of materials.

In August, the National Cotton Council Board of Directors passed their Strategic Planning Committee’s recommendations and these recommendations became Council Policy. One of those recommendations was a phase out of Woven PP bags and Wire ties while urging additional research into a tougher Polyethylene Film bag or suitable cotton bag.

The issue now goes to the Joint Cotton Industry Bale Packaging Committee (JCIBPC). The JCIBPC conducts the testing, approves packaging and writes the specifications that USDA adopts for the Storage of CCC cotton. The next meeting of the JCIBPC is this Wednesday (February 26) in Memphis. This committee will take the language from the Council and determine how long the phase out period will be.

Both the National Cotton Ginners Association and the Southeastern Cotton Ginners Association representatives on the NCC Packaging and Distribution Committee made motions to amend the Council’s policy that passed last August. There were strong arguments for and against and those making the arguments did a great job on both sides. Ultimately both of the motions were defeated and the policy is being carried forward.

We will update you after the JCIBPC to let our members know what this will look like going forward. Many of you may be working on your plans for 2025 and wanted to make sure you were aware of the way the future is beginning to look.

We have received questions about cotton bagging. There is an approved cotton bag but it is heavy and very expensive. Heavy is good (uses more cotton) but expensive is bad… obviously. There has been a lot of talk about fast tracking experimental bagging to help accelerate the development of a suitable cotton bag.

The Bagging and the Ties changes will be impactful for the ginning industry but seems to be regional in the significance. Woven PP bags are the predominant bag in the West and Southwest so this will be a huge change for them and require significant infrastructure switch over. Woven is used in the SE but not nearly to the extent it is out West.

Wire ties tend to be used by smaller gins (not always) and a bit higher percentage in the Southeast. These gins may have less capacity to make large capital investments.

The arguments for making these changes have been made for many years. The woven bags have been an apparent source of complaints from mills for contamination. The wire has been a source of personnel injuries in mills. Additionally the Chinese Gov has rules in place that could halt all woven bags if they wanted to which could become a non-tariff trade barrier. Wire ties have caused injuries and fires according to representatives of the textile industry.

Over the next few days, our representatives on the JCIBPC will do their best to minimize the impact and move the industry forward.

Please don’t hesitate to contact me (dusty at southern-sotheastern.org) for further information or send feedback.

DSF