New Cotton Ginning School, First Of Its Kind

Lummus Corporation, one of the world’s leading suppliers of machinery and replacement parts of the cotton ginning industry, has demonstrated its confidence in the future of Zimbabwe’s agricultural economy by investing in the country’s first specialised cotton-ginning school.

The ginning school is the brainchild of The Cotton Company of Zimbabwe (COTTCO), Southern Africa’s leading cotton buying, processing and marketing organisation. Lummus Corporation is providing financial support and technical expertise for the school.

Although similar ginning schools are widely operated throughout the United States and Australia, there are only a handful in Africa while the Zimbabwean school is the first of its kind in Southern Africa. Ginning schools are thought to transfer ginning technology at a level far better than any other method in use today.

Cottco’s ginning engineers from as farafield as Gokwe and Sanyati attended the week-long school, which took place at Cottco’s Cotton Pavilion in Harare. It is hoped that the knowledge gained from the school will reinforce the engineers’ existing practical knowledge and experiences, thus ultimately ensuring Cottco’s gins operate at maximum throughput.

Officially opening the ginning school, Cottco’s Managing Director Mr Sylvester Nguni, said that the school’s establishment bode well for the future of the local cotton industry, adding that while cotton ginners had to learn by

“the hard road of experience” in the past, the new school offered “a systematic method for learning how to improve cotton fibre and the entire ginning process”.

In attendance at the school were two of Lummus’s most senior ginning engineers, namely Mr Alain Pirlot from the United States and Mr Steve Mahoney from Australia. Both men have extensive knowledge of ginning equipment throughout the cotton world and are already familiar to many of Cottco’s engineers.

Topics covered at the school included planned and preventative maintenance of gin equipment, electrical and hydraulic systems, gin safety and general gin management. However the highlight of the week was the site visit to Cottco’s cotton gin in Chinhoyi which afforded students the opportunity of witnessing one of the country’s leading gins at work. The 2 x 170 high capacity gin, which utilises state-of-theart technology, features the latest bulk handling technology as well as a module feeding system. Students were able to experience first hand the entire ginning process from beginning to end and to familiarise themselves with the operation of this t e c h n o l o g i c a l l y advanced gin.

Certificates were presented to the students on the final day of the school by Mr Pirlot and Mr Mahoney.

Mr Joe Thomas, vice president of Lummus Engineering, said the ginning school was invaluable to the Zimbabwean cotton industry “since it provided technology transfer at grass roots level”. “Recognising the needs of the cotton ginning industry and developing programmes to satisfy those needs has always been Lummus tradition” he said proudly.

Mr Peter Dove, a highly respected figure in the Zimbabwe cotton industry, Course Participants said he too was excited about the new ginning school, adding that it was “oneof the best things that had happened to the local cotton industry for many years”.

Based in Savannah, Georgia in the United States, Lummus Corporation has a proud tradition of being the leader in ginning technology while Cottco is renowned for consistently supplying international markets with quality lint for more than thirty years.