CENTRE — Only eight months ago, an 82-acre tract of land on U.S. Highway 411, 5 miles east of Centre, was a forest of pine trees.
Today, the property is the site of a giant cotton gin under construction. It will be the most technologically advanced gin in the United States, perhaps even on the planet.
Projected to begin operation by mid-November, the complex will include a state-of-the-art 31,500 square-foot gin building; two cotton storage structures, each capable of holding 24,000 to 25,000 bales; an office building, seed house and mechanic shop; with additional structures to be added soon.
Fifty years ago, there were 14 gins in Cherokee County. In 2018, there is only one, the still-in-operation Cherokee Gin on Maple Street, three blocks from Centre’s uptown business district.
However, the current gin can process, bale, strap and wrap more cotton than all of the other previous 13 gins combined. In fact, the current Cherokee Gin can process a bale of cotton in less than 100 seconds, with only seven personnel needed to operate the entire facility. In the early days of ginning, it often took more than hour to gin a single bale of cotton.
The soon-to-be-completed gin will be capable of processing a bale in 72 seconds, or about 50 bales per hour, according to Rich Lindsey, a Cherokee Gin official.
Lindsey, son of longtime state legislator Richard Lindsey, said actual construction of the new gin has been in progress since April, when the concrete foundations for the buildings were poured. Daily work has continued since then, with a short delay caused by recent rains that resulted in too much muddy ground for heavy equipment to be used. That delay has pushed back the beginning of ginning operations at the new site from the original mid-October date to mid-November.
The current gin on Maple Street will continue in operation until the new gin has been completed. Lindsey reported on Oct. 11 that more than 6,000 bales already had been ginned this autumn.
The gin is running six large trucks, 24 hours per day, to collect cotton modules (which each average 12 to 14 bales of cotton) from farmers and deliver them to the gin. In the past, farmers pulled cotton wagons to the gins and parked their wagons while awaiting their turns. Farmers often lost a considerable amount of their cotton during transport and roadsides were “decorated” with cotton bolls for weeks.
The gin on U.S. 411 is being constructed by Cherokee Fabrications in Salem, which also has manufactured the machines for facility.
The new gin operation is a joint partnership with Cherokee Gin and Cotton Company Inc. and Jordan Cotton LLC.
Source: High Plains Journal, U.S.A Monday, 15 October 2018