The Sustainable Cotton Tracker (SCOT) is CmiA’s digital supply chain tracking system, providing digital supply chain transparency for CmiA cotton products under both the Mass Balance and Segregation chain of custody models. SCOT enables CmiA retailers, brands, and supply chain partners to digitally record, verify, and monitor CmiA cotton flows throughout the textile supply chain, ensuring compliance with the selected chain of custody model.
Each partner in the textile supply chain participates in SCOT through its own company account. The system follows a fibre-forward approach: starting with the cotton trader, digital CmiA cotton inventory is passed through every production stage—from spinning mill to fabric mill and garment producer—until it is finally allocated to the retailer purchase orders (POs) uploaded by CmiA retailers and brands.
Importer
Garment Producers
Fabric Mills
Spinning Mills
Cotton Trader
Where applicable, intermediate levels such as yarn traders, yarn dye houses, fabric traders, and fabric dye houses also use their SCOT accounts to record and acknowledge their CmiA sales and purchases.
CmiA Mass Balance
Under CmiA Mass Balance, cotton quantities are recorded and balanced digitally at each production level. At the spinning mill level, the mill is not required to physically use the purchased CmiA cotton for the yarn sold as CmiA MB yarns. Instead, the equivalent amount of CmiA cotton must be available in the mill’s digital inventory in SCOT and is deducted from this inventory when CmiA yarn is sold. This ensures that the total volume of CmiA yarn sold never exceeds the volume of CmiA cotton purchased and recorded in the system.
Once a spinning mill has exhausted its digital CmiA cotton inventory, it must purchase additional CmiA cotton before further CmiA yarn transactions can be recorded. The same mass-balance principle applies throughout the supply chain: fabric mills must hold sufficient digital CmiA yarn inventory to cover their fabric sales, and garment producers must hold sufficient digital inventory in CmiA yarn or fabric before fulfilling CmiA orders. This enables SCOT to calculate the exact amount of CmiA cotton allocated to each individual order while allowing physical mixing and substitution in line with the Mass Balance chain of custody model.
CmiA Traceable
Under CmiA Traceable*, the system goes a step further by preserving the identity of the cotton origin throughout the supply chain. Instead of balancing equivalent volumes within a digital inventory, each transaction is linked to a specific batch of CmiA cotton from its verified origin. Physical substitution is therefore not permitted.
The cotton trader records each sale together with the corresponding CmiA cotton origin. This origin information is then passed on through every subsequent transaction in SCOT—from the spinning mill and fabric mill to the garment producer and ultimately the retailer order. As a result, brands and retailers receive full traceability of their CmiA Traceable products, back to the individual cotton producer.
* The term “Segregation” replaces the term “Hard Identity Preserved” (HIP) in order to align with the terminology used by internationally recognised chain-of-custody models under ISO 22095 as well as by many ISEAL-aligned sustainability systems. This change serves solely to harmonise terminology; the underlying requirements regarding traceability and material separation remain unchanged.