Supima, the marketing brand for American-grown Pima cotton, will introduce AQRe Project, a platform assuring authenticity, quality, and responsibility of the American-grown cotton variety used in garments, in July, said Marc Lewkowitz, President and CEO.
As many as 40 Indian textile mills have registered on the platform, according to Mr. Lewkowitz.
Mr. Lewkowitz, who was here in connection with a seminar organised by Cotton USA on Monday, told The Hindu, that globally 130 spinners had registered on the platform so far. With garment buyers in several countries looking at sustainability and traceability, the platform uses blockchain-based traceability and forensic science-based technology for authentication of the PIMA cotton used.
There are almost 550 licencees globally for Supima, including 60-70 in India some of which are domestic brands.
Supima website says it will be transitioning its licensing programme to a digital and forensically-verified platform. “This revolutionary platform will be a standard-setting industry benchmark for combining digital traceability and transparency with physical authentication, providing an unrivaled level of confidence in both the content and provenance of Supima products.”
According to Mr. Lewkowitz, the U.S. is traditionally the largest producer of extra-long staple (ELS) variety PIMA cotton, and almost 95% of its production is exported. India is its top buyer, procuring 35-45 % of the cotton.
PIMA production for 2023-2024 crop year (August to July) is expected to be 2.5 lakhs-3 lakh bales compared to 4.74 lakh bales in 2022-2023 and 3.4 lakh bales in 2021-2022. The floods in California were affecting the current production. However, the current price was lower than the cost of production, he added.
William Bettendorf, Director – Supply Chain South Asia, of Cotton Council International, said that the U.S. cotton production in 2022 was 14.6 million bales of approximately 220 kg each as against 17.5 million bales the previous year.
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