None of this works without you because the cotton could not be fashioned into clothing without you.
The following steps apply first and foremost to the CmiA Mass Balance system (MB). If you or your clients wish to use the Hard Identity Preserved system, additional requirements will need to be met.
This is the most important step. Purchase CmiA-verified cotton from authorised traders. Please specifically order CmiA cotton; ordering only African cotton is not enough. In addition, Cotton made in Africa must be mentioned on contracts and invoices. For your initial registration please send us a suitable document as proof of purchase. All further CmiA cotton purchases will then be entered in the SCOT Tracking System by the cotton traders and be added to your cotton balance with your acknowledgement.
Register your company with ATAKORA Fördergesellschaft GmbH, the Aid by Trade Foundation’s marketing association. At this stage, you will be asked to provide additional information about your products and to appoint a contact person to coordinate integration with CmiA.
After paying the registration fee, your spinning mill will receive a CmiA certificate valid for one year, and it will be added to all relevant lists and databases as a CmiA yarn supplier. Potential clients now know that they can purchase CmiA yarn from your spinning mill.
As a registered spinning mill, you are entitled to produce and sell as much CmiA yarn as you have purchased CmiA cotton before. As soon as your mass balance becomes negative, new CmiA cotton must be ordered.
Every month, you enter your CmiA yarn sales into CmiA’s SCOT Tracking System or use the system to acknowledge your business partners’ purchases of CmiA yarn.
Your CmiA cotton purchases are added to your cotton balance after being entered into SCOT by the cotton traders and being acknowledged by you.
This applies even if your spinning mill is part of a multi-part or vertical production operation and produces the CmiA yarn for its own use.
If a spinning mill demonstrates poor participation in the CmiA Tracking System (i.e. by failing to maintain regular transaction entries or acknowledgments via SCOT), or if a spinning mill incurs a negative mass balance and does not order sufficient quantities of CmiA cotton in time, the offending spinning mill’s certificate will be revoked, meaning that it is deleted from the relevant databases and lists and that all CmiA partners will be informed accordingly.
The following information are also important for processing CmiA cotton:
It is also possible to register with CmiA as a yarn trader. A corresponding registration certificate enables you to buy CmiA yarns from registered spinning mills and sell them to fabric Producers.
Yarn traders also require CmiA memberships. A CmiA membership number is valid for one year and permits you to purchase CmiA yarn from registered spinning mills and to sell to CmiA-registered fabric producers. All purchases and sales of CmiA yarn must also be entered into or acknowledged via CmiA’s SCOT Tracking System on a monthly basis.
If your company is a yarn dye house, you also require a CmiA membership, meaning that your company receives a one-year CmiA membership number and enters its purchases and sales of CmiA yarn into the SCOT Tracking System.
More detailed data and materials are available for download here, including the list of Cotton Companies, Chain of Custody Guidelines, communication guidelines for marketing as well as links to the CmiA supply chain App for Android and iOS.
Download our Supply Chain App here:
Cotton made in Africa smooths the way for using sustainable raw materials in the mass market by providing you with advice and support for integration into existing procurement structures. Feel free to contact us by email:
Your contact persons
supplychain@abt-foundation.org.
