Plains Cotton Cooperative Association (PCCA), a Lubbock, Texas-based farmer-owned cotton marketing cooperative, has announced a modernization project that will increase production speed and flexibility at its American Cotton Growers (ACG) denim manufacturing mill in Littlefield, Texas.

In April of this year, the association plans to install the first of three Schlafhorst Autocoro 8 rotor spinning frames, each containing 480 autonomous rotors and allowing simultaneous production of multiple yarn counts. PCCA expects to complete the project in early June.

"These new spinning frames will replace half of ACG's current rotor spinning capacity with much higher manufacturing efficiencies," said Bryan Gregory, vice president of Textile Manufacturing, PCCA. "We will be able to manufacture up to five different yarn counts simultaneously on each new spinning frame due to their single-drive technology. We can change these continuously with full production in progress, and this will allow us to better meet our customers' needs as they respond to changes in the denim apparel market. This is because with this new equipment, start-up takes minutes, not hours, to reach full production."

ACG's annual production capacity totals 36 million linear yards of fabric, making it one of the largest denim manufacturers in the United States. The mill supplies fabric to Denimatrix — which is PCCA's denim apparel manufacturing facility in Guatemala — as well as to other cut-and-sew plants in Mexico, and Central and South America. PCCA recently combined ACG and Denimatrix under a new entity called American Denimatrix, which, according to the association, comprises the only fully vertically integrated denim apparel supply chain in the Western Hemisphere.

February 1, 2012