The views presented here are of Mr. Peter Stahlecker,Managing Director

As we all know, in the past months cotton prices have soared to unprecedented-highs. Actually, a customer of mine has studied the prices on the New York Cotton Exchange from about 1875 to the present, and he told me that even adjusted for inflation, cotton prices have never been higher than right now.

However,cotton is no exception: Other commodities-some in a way more important than cotton for human survival and human well being, such as rice, wheat etc. -all have risen to historical heights.

While I am an engineer, not an economist, it seems fairly clear to me that commodities in general will become more costly: Ever more people escape from poverty worldwide, and (rightly!) demand more material goods, starting with food, over clothing and housing to more sophisticated ones.

The logical trend of today, which clearly follows from the above observation, is that one should not waste commodities. This makes both economical and ecological sense.

The SUESSEN EliTe�Compact System is one means to help save the precious commodity cotton and related commodities and resources.

The utilization of the cotton fibre is considerably increased with SUESSENEliTe�Compact compared to conventional spinning. This is in evidence by-amongst others-the following facts, which have been proven by 30, 00,000 EliTe�Compact Spindles in India alone:

• yarn strength and elongation are higher up to 20 % with SUESSEN EliTe�Compact
• combing can be reduced
• lower grade cotton may be used

Higher strength and higher elongation may be used to reduce the twist multiplier of the yarn, yielding higher production. This means, lower power consumption per kg of yarn- and low power consumption means saving on the scare resource electrical power.

Reduction in combing means that the waste is reduced. More of the cotton processed by the mill finds its way into the final yarn.

Lower grade cotton certainly needs fewer resources (fertilizer, irrigation) to be grown and/or gives higher yield per acre (Else Suvin Cotton, Giza Cotton and Sea Island cotton would be grown everywhere in the world-which is not the case!)

Hence,by using lower grade cotton, we are effectively utilizing the available resources in an economical, hence also in a more ecological way.

Many Indian spinning mills are already acting in an economically and ecologically sensible way by extensively utilizing SUESSEN EliTe�Compact in their mills: as stated above out of almost 50, 00,000 EliTe�Compact Spindles running worldwide, 30, 00,000 are installed in India!