A return to Korea for ICA Bremen

In association with the Spinners & Weavers Association of Korea (SWAK), ICA Bremen delivered its ‘Cotton Classing’ training course to 14 delegates in South Korea for the fourth year in a row between 22 – 26 October.

Established in response to industry demand in 2014, this five-day training course was delivered by Karsten Froese (ICA Bremen) and focused on the classing of US and other Upland raw cottons. This year’s training took place at the KOTITI testing and research institute in Gyeonggi-do.

The training course was based on approved standard procedures for visual grading and staple pulling. Various theory was covered along with learning about the agreed standards and regulations for quality evaluation according to the rules of the International Cotton Association Ltd.

One delegate who benefitted from this year’s training said: “While observing various samples and standard boxes, I was able to develop the eyes for cotton and easily connected to the theory parts we learned”.

A further delegate said: “I am pleased to have gained the overall skills to grade cotton in terms of color and fiber length”.

Following the training course, Karsten Froese said: “It was my pleasure to provide the course and to guide people of the Korean spinning industry to the manual classing of raw cotton and the evaluation of the findings. During the week we adapted the course slightly to meet the different professional backgrounds and needs of this years delegates. I very much appreciated their motivation and interest to learn about this aspect of dealing with cotton quality. Thanks again for the continued outstanding support by the teams at SWAK and KOTITI contributing to another successful course this year“.

The next ICA Bremen ‘Learning about Machinery’ and ‘Classing & Testing’ training programmes will be taking place in 2019 – the exact dates are yet to be confirmed. In addition to our annual training programmes, we plan to continue delivering more bespoke training courses to the cotton community at other global locations.

If you would like to add yourself to the interested lists for the above training programmes or would like any additional information regarding ICA Bremen, please email .

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