Seed cotton, fibre and garments require separate balances

Equating installed equipment capacity with actual fibre transformation, or summing capacities across stages with different physical units, corrupts national planning.[R10][R12][S06][S29] Nameplate capacity is an engineering ceiling conditional on power, skills, spare parts, and working capital, whereas throughput is a realised flow of accepted material over a measured period.[R12][S02][S29] Each stage uses a distinct physical denominator:

• Ginning capacity is measured in tonnes of seed cotton input per campaign day or season across saw stands and bale presses.[S04][S05][S06]
• Spinning capacity (cotton mill use) is defined by the OECD-FAO Agricultural Outlook 2026-2035 as the transformation of cotton fibres by mills into yarn ("Cotton consumption refers to the transformation of cotton fibres by mills into yarn"), where lint tonnage per spindle-hour varies with yarn count.[S02][S29]
• Weaving, knitting, and wet-processing capacity is measured in metres or tonnes of cloth, requiring fabric density, blend ratio, and process waste to convert back to lint.[S02][S10][S27]
• Garment assembly capacity is measured in cut-make-trim pieces per shift, where domestic lint equivalence is zero whenever imported cloth is sewn.[S12][S23][S29]

2.8 Asset registers require contemporary commissioning and utilisation evidence

Upstream, both the shared evidence register and the September 2022 MINPMEESA report ("A la SODECOTON, l'égrenage est réalisé au niveau de 9 usines") state that SODECOTON operates nine ginning plants and two oil mills supporting more than 220,000 cotton producers.[R03][S06] On SODECOTON's undated homepage, the text describes a fleet of 660 rolling vehicles and civil-engineering machines ("Au niveau de la logistique, l'entreprise dispose d'un parc de 660 véhicules roulants et matériels de génie civil"), while animated counters extract as zero.[S05] Neither undated web text nor historical diagnostics establish active 2026 plant availability without a contemporary commissioning record.[S02][S05][S06]

Downstream, the shared evidence register reports July 2023 capacity utilisation at CICAM of 33.7 percent at Garoua, 48.9 percent at CICAM 1, and 10.83 percent at CICAM 2, with underutilisation costing about XAF 2 billion in 2020.[R12] These three site percentages cannot be combined into an unweighted arithmetic mean (which would yield an illustrative 31.14 percent figure) because Garoua, CICAM 1, and CICAM 2 perform different manufacturing stages (spinning and weaving in the north versus weaving, dyeing, bleaching, and printing in the coastal corridor), each with its own physical denominator and machine balance.[R12][S02] A low utilisation rate at a wet-processing or printing site can bottleneck upstream spinning even when northern ginning plants hold ample lint bales in stock, proving that downstream machine availability and working capital govern actual lint absorption.[R12][S02][S03][S10] Similarly, the press-reported decline in CICAM's domestic market share from about 85 percent three decades ago to about 5 percent today measures commercial fabric sales in a domestic market now supplied largely by imports; it must never be confused with the approximate 5 percent national lint-processing share, even though both figures happen to be 5 percent.[R06][R11][S23]

For announced projects, the shared register records a 12 November 2025 press report on the Camtext SA integrated cotton-to-textile project (citing a planned investment of US$300 million or XAF 180 billion involving Panafritex and Arise alongside SODECOTON, CNPS, and Marlo; 12,000 tonnes a year processed; about 12,000 jobs at a Dibamba hub and 3,000 at Garoua; a return on investment near 11 years; and optimal capacity around 2033), while a separate entry records the announced SODECOTON-CICAM merger targeted by 2030, echoing paragraph 107 of the Stratégie Nationale de Développement 2020-2030 ("Le rapprochement stratégique entre la SODECOTON et la CICAM, devrait permettre de constituer un pôle industriel intégré autour duquel sera structurée la filière coton-textile").[R08][R09][R10][S34] In a disciplined national denominator system, these restructuring and greenfield announcements must remain logged as policy intentions or grade-C press announcements rather than active conversion capacity until engineering diligence confirms whether the reported 12,000 tonnes refers to ginned lint intake, spun yarn output, or finished cloth, and until financial close, plant commissioning, and metered bale intake are achieved.[R08][R09][R10][S29]