National Standard: New Compulsory National Standard For Cotton Issued

Reporters learned from the General Administration of Market Supervision (the National Standards Commission) on the 21st that the mandatory national standard "Cotton Part 1: Serrated Fine Pile Cotton" (GB 1103.1-2023) has been released recently and will be implemented on September 1, 2024.

The standard is organically linked with the 2012 standard in terms of content and structure, and is consistent with the international cotton grading in terms of core indicators. There are six specific changes:

First, the new standard adds the index of short fiber rate and detection method to meet the demand of cotton textile industry for high-quality cotton, aiming to solve the problem of yarn quality reduction and spinning cost increase caused by high short fiber rate of machine picked cotton; Secondly, the grade interval of color grading map was optimized to meet the requirements of cotton color distribution statistics and instrument inspection accuracy level; The third is to tighten the quality grading requirements of the rolling workers, improve the bottom line level of the physical standard of mid-range cotton, and promote the improvement of the cotton quality level. The physical standard is the reference for judging the cotton quality level; Fourth, set the impurity content rate strictly, and force the optimization of the processing technology of machine picking cotton under the new situation that the impurity content rate increases due to the popularization of machine picking cotton; Fifthly, the sampling rule by batch has been changed from the original sampling rule of one package per 10 packages to the cascade sampling rule, that is, the more the quantity of each batch, the more samples will be randomly selected to improve the representativeness of samples; Sixthly, the two-dimensional cotton bale marking form has been added to further improve the level of digitalization of the cotton industry, which is conducive to achieving the traceability of cotton quality.

It is reported that in recent years, China's cotton industry has seen new situations such as planting centralization, picking mechanization, and high-end demand, which put forward new demands for updating and upgrading national cotton standards. In order to adapt to new changes and new demands, the Market Supervision Administration, together with relevant departments, timely revised the standards, which is of great significance for ensuring the safety of China's cotton supply and promoting the high-quality development of the cotton industry.

Next, the Market Supervision Administration will work with relevant departments to strengthen the publicity, training and interpretation of the new standards, and guide cotton planting, harvesting, processing, inspection, warehousing, trade and other links to implement the new standards. Accelerate the improvement of cotton notarization and inspection rules according to the new standards, and ensure the implementation of the new standards in the new cotton season of 2024.

(Source: Xinhuanet)