When Nuno Sousa returns to Portugal later this year, he will be one of only a few people in the country's growing textile industry with a working knowledge of the entire cotton production process.
Sousa is among 40 students from 18 countries enrolled this summer in the American Cotton Shippers Association International Cotton Institute, a nine-week program at Rhodes College in Memphis designed to provide basic education in all aspects of the cotton industry.
Part of that basic education included a trip to Greenwood to visit the headquarters of Staplcotn Friday.
The membership cooperative was an early stop for the students, most of whom arrived in the United States last week. Officials from the company spoke to the students about how cotton cooperatives work and about the cotton classing process.
"Some people in my country's companies know about these things, but this will be a definite advantage for me," Sousa, a purchasing agent, said. "This course has very good fame abroad."
Bill Griffin, the institute's program director, said the program has operated for seven years, and each year classes have visited Staplcotn. He said visiting the manual classing rooms and warehouses at the Greenwood company is part of introducing students to the entire process of producing cotton.
"Companies like to send us their employees when they first hire them," Griffin, who is also a cotton agent, said. "That way, as they move them around later, they already know how different parts of the industry work together.."
Students who register for the institute, which is part of the Meeman Center for Lifelong Learning at Rhodes, come from almost every part of the cotton industry from growers to ginners to textile manufacturers, he said.
Griffin said the institute's summer program offers international companies two primary benefits: it replaces lengthy in-house training programs and it teaches a global cotton language.
"Once everyone begins speaking the same language business flows more easily across borders," the Memphis cotton agent said.
Griffin also said the Memphis location of the school benefits the area cotton industry by bringing in businessmen from around the world.
"It is to familiarize people from around the world with U.S. cotton and U.S. trading so that they will be encouraged to buy U.S. cotton, and they do," Griffin said. "While they're here, they meet people in the trade and build relationships that continue beyond their stay here."
Griffin said the class spends about one-quarter of its time on the classing process and that Staplcotn's Greenwood facilities are a good location to introduce the hand classing system.
Jan Verhage, Staplcotn's classing and sample operations director, said about 15 percent of the cotton marketed by the company is classed by hand. The company also delivers some unclassed cotton directly to other merchants.
Verhage said Staplcotn classified all non-merchant cotton by hand until about seven years ago, but now it also relies on the high volume instrument, or HVI, classing used by the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
"We sell a lot of cotton based on HVI class," Verhage said. "HVI gives them a good broad idea, and manual classing fine tunes that."
Manual classing is particularly important to buyers for companies producing fine yarns and higher-end products, the classing operations director said.
Each bale of cotton produced in the United States has two samples cut from it for classing. One is sent to the regional USDA office, and the other is used by the organization marketing that particular bale.
Prosper Kumi, a cotton trader in the West African country of Ghana, was especially interested in the United States' classing process.
"The main thing is, in Ghana, we are not classing every bale. We do nat have classing facilities like this," Kumi said motioning to Staplcotn employees looking over tables of cotton samples. "We still need to set up standards like the U.S. has."
Kumi said his main goal is to improve his general knowledge of the cotton industry so that he can improve the industry in Ghana.
"We have mostly small farms, but now we are introducing cooperatives," the cotton trader said of his country, which privatized farming seven years ago. "We see that as the only way the individual farmer can grow in our country."
Staplcotn has operated as a membership cooperative since 1921 when a group of Delta planters met to get a fair price for their crop.
The company now markets more than 3million bales of cotton per year for farmers in 11 states.
Jay Pilecki, who works in the company's warehouse division, said Staplcotn also operates the largest cotton warehouses east of the Mississippi River. He said, the company owns and operates 13 warehouse locations in a three-state area.
