Value chain / Stage 03 · Carding, drafting, and twist insertion
Spinning opens lint bales, cards out neps, attenuates fibre slivers between progressive roller pairs, and locks strength with helical twist. The proposed Phase 1 design in GFT's Cameroon textile programme sources yarn upstream and concentrates on domestic garment assembly.
01 / Six operations from lint bale to yarn cone
A lint bale arrives as a dense mass of entangled fibres. Six opening, attenuating and clearing operations turn it into yarn that holds on a loom or knitting needle.
Draft bench · one strand, six operations
Schematic. Counts and densities are illustrative.
Operation 5 of 6
Operation 01 · Bale pluckers and optical sorter
Loose tufts: no linear density to measure
Operation 02 · Card cylinder with revolving flats
Card sliver, about 5.0 to 5.5 ktex (illustrative)
Operation 03 · Draw frame with servo autolevelling
Eight-fold doubling holds weight near the card sliver (illustrative)
Operation 04 · Comber (optional) and roving frame
Roving about Ne 1.0, within Ne 0.8 to 1.2 (illustrative)
Operation 05 · Ring frame, or rotor spinning machine
Yarn at Ne 30 (illustrative); Ne 12 to Ne 40 is the working range
Operation 06 · Cone winder with optical and capacitive clearer
Same Ne 30 yarn, now on a cone (illustrative)
From the card sliver to the yarn the mass per metre falls about 260 times (5,200 tex to 19.7 tex, illustrative counts, GFT arithmetic: thinner = 5,200 ÷ tex).
02 / Two mechanical spinning architectures
Fabric specifications dictate the yarn. Fine combed shirting and soft single-jersey T-shirts need true-twist ring yarn; heavy drills, denim and towelling suit open-end rotor yarn.
Lit on the machine: the whole process path. Speeds and counts are illustrative.
In ring spinning, roving is attenuated through a 3-over-3 apron drafting zone and twisted as a C-shaped steel traveller orbits a lubricated ring at illustrative spindle speeds of 16,000 to 18,500 rpm. Fibres are twisted from the outside inward while under tension, so ring yarn achieves high axial alignment and tenacity. That makes it essential for fine apparel counts (illustrative Ne 24/1 to Ne 40/1) in T-shirts, polo shirts and tropical shirting.
Open-end rotor frames eliminate the roving and winding stages entirely. A saw-tooth opening roller opens drawn sliver to single fibres, and vacuum deposits them into the V-groove of a rotor turning above 100,000 rpm (illustrative). The yarn has wrapper fibres around its core, giving high abrasion resistance, low hairiness and strong economics in coarse-to-medium counts (illustrative Ne 10/1 to Ne 20/1) for uniform drills and canvas.
Count converter · arithmetic, tex = 590.5 / Ne
Ne 30=19.7 tex
Ring territory: inside the illustrative Ne 20 to 40 band.
Engineering comparison, illustrative specifications. Relevance to the Cameroon product mix
01 Step 1 of 4
6 to 4 OPS02 Step 2 of 4
Ne 20 to 4003 Step 3 of 4
Z-TWIST04 Step 4 of 4
14 to 18%Proposed programme scenario: compare Phase 1 scope
03 / Who pays for the machines
Select or hover a capital rule to highlight its stages on the 01 to 08 ruler above:
180bn XAF, Camtext SA integrated project
No Phase 1 spinning build: proposed yarn offtake
Return near 11 years, optimal capacity about 2033
Phase 1 returns follow garment economics (illustrative inputs in the unit-economics tool)
CICAM plants, July 2023
Stay clear of the 10.83-48.9% band by tying spindle load to garment orders
01 Benchmark · Camtext SA pole
“US$300 million (180 billion XAF) of integrated spinning and fabric capacity, anchored at Garoua and Dibamba.”
02 Benchmark · CICAM and the pole merger
“Spindle capacity without downstream garment orders leaves half to nine-tenths of the mill floor idle.”
03 Benchmark · Equipment and the XAF peg
“Euro-denominated spinning machinery sits on the fixed 655.957 XAF/EUR peg, eliminating EUR/XAF currency drift.”
12,000t/yr planned cotton processing, Camtext SA
6,000 t After month 6: 6,000 t of the 12,000 t a year, at an even load of 1,000 t a month (GFT arithmetic, load profile assumed).
10.83-48.9%capacity used across the CICAM plants, July 2023
10.83-48.9% From 10.83% to 48.9% of capacity in use. Pick a plant.
Restructuring estimate, CFAF billion
30.7 to 48.2relaunch plan 70.2
655.957XAF per EUR, fixed peg
04 / Electronic yarn clearing and power quality
Clearer trace, strand mass at display scale (schematic)Metres of yarn through the clearer (schematic)Time (schematic)Conditioning time (schematic)
Spinning is governed by two real-time signals: optical and capacitive clearing sensors on every winding head, and power conditioning that stops micro-outages snapping thousands of ends at once.
05 / Preserving provenance across blending
Traceability usually fails in the blowroom: mixing dozens of bales into one sliver erases farm origin unless the laydown recipe is logged as a batch genealogy.
Lot passport4 of 4 records
3.1Custody node 3.1 · Laydown recipe registration
3.2Custody node 3.2 · Sliver can and roving tracking
3.3Custody node 3.3 · Ring and rotor doff logging
3.4Custody node 3.4 · Cone label and quality passport
06 / Hand-over to Stage 04: Knitting and weaving
Fibre discipline becomes yarn regularity; capital discipline keeps the mill bankable.
At the exit of Stage 03, lint has become an engineered linear structure with known count, tenacity, twist and lot genealogy. Next, one-dimensional yarn becomes two-dimensional cloth.