Salem, Alabama – February 10, 2006

Cherokee is pleased to announce the recent addition of two warehousing facilities to support the U.S. cotton ginning industry.  The first is a new 3,000 square-foot warehouse built in Malden, Missouri beside the existing affiliate company, Roy Owens Construction.  This allows Cherokee to respond as fast as possible to customers in this area.  “We have a good customer base in this part of the country,” says Greg Fiquett, Sales Engineer. “For the 2005 ginning season we installed another Cherokee complete turn-key gin plant.  And our new warehouse is just right down the street from the new gin in Malden.”

The second warehouse is in Lubbock, Texas, and boasts 7,500 square feet of office and warehouse space.  This move marks the relocation of the existing Lubbock office to include needed warehouse space.  “We have maintained a presence in Lubbock for a couple of years now, but we will soon offer the same level of parts support in Lubbock that we already offer in our two other locations,” says Steve Evans, Sales and Controls Engineer from the Lubbock office.  “This new office will give us the space we need to make it all happen.”

Cherokee was established in 1994 by owners Roy Owens, Paul Owens, and Jerry Scarborough.  Today, Cherokee offers a complete line of new and used ginning equipment, parts, and service.  Together with Roy Owens Construction, Cherokee can provide a single-source solution for the planning, construction and installation of new turn-key facilities from the ground up.  Whether your needs include an entire gin plant, a module feeder, baling press, or anything in-between, Cherokee would like the opportunity to earn your business.  Let Cherokee be your source for complete ginning solutions.

Press Release - November 4, 2004

Cherokee is proud to announce the success of a new, complete turn-key gin plant for Monette Co-op, Inc. in Monette, Arkansas. When Monette Co-op wanted to replace their old gin plant with a new, high capacity facility, they selected Roy Owens Construction Company and Cherokee to rise to the challenge. Installing complete gin plants is nothing new to the folks on this team, but the big difference in this gin plant lies in the fact that it is filled with Cherokee-designed and Cherokee-manufactured equipment from beginning to end. This required the introduction of several new machines to the Cherokee line-up, including the Cherokee Majestic Feeder and Gin Stand, the Cherokee Regal Lint Cleaner, and the Cherokee No-Door Elite Baling Press. Along with the expanded equipment line, Cherokee introduced a whole new generation of user-friendly control systems to the ginning industry.

The forward-thinking folks at Monette Co-op wanted to plan ahead so that the number of gin stands could be later increased from 3 to 4. Cherokee designed the plant layout, ductwork, and press to accommodate such an addition in the future. But even now with only 3 gin stands, they can boast of production levels much higher than some would have expected. Before very long into the season, they sustained ginning rates of over 50 bales-per-hour, and maintained near 40 bale-per-hour average ginning rates for 24-hour periods.

The new gin plant begins with a 3-1/2 bed, stationary head module feeder equipped with a 120” wide storage hopper and dust suction system, followed by split first and second stage pre-cleaning and drying systems. Each first stage includes an incoming moisture controller, a high capacity rock trap with automatic double dump valve, a 48” wide tower drier with 27” high shelf spacing, a 12-foot wide Cherokee Grizzly Hot Air Cleaner, Steady Feed Disperser Hopper, and a Cherokee Savage Stick Machine. Each second stage includes a 12-foot wide Cherokee Grizzly Hot Air Cleaner, followed by a matching gravity cleaner. Three 8-million BTU burners supply the heat required for both stages of pre-cleaning and drying.

Following the pre-cleaning and drying equipment, the high capacity conveyor distributor with fire valve and automatic overflow hopper presents the prepared cotton to the very heart of the gin plant. At this point, the cotton enters one of three Cherokee Majestic Feeders and Gin Stands. Each feeder performs additional cleaning and separates the cotton into individual locks for optimum presentation to the 170-saw gin stands, which remove the lint (cotton fiber) from the seed. These gin stands delivered over 17 bales-per-hour each, almost from the start. Each gin stand is followed by a Cherokee Pneumatic Jet Lint Cleaner, which gently removes trash and undeveloped seeds without the use of any moving parts. Next in each line is the 112”-wide Cherokee Regal Lint Cleaner. The Regal features the proven “rolling feed bar” patented design, and a minimum of moving parts to minimize handling and damage to the fibers.

After the lint cleaners, all three streams of cotton are brought together in the battery condenser, where moisture is restored and the cotton is formed into a solid sheet for presentation to the baling system. The No-Door Elite Press is fed by a hydraulically powered belt feeder, lint pusher, and tramper. The press is equipped with a 10-inch diameter upper cylinder, and a 16-inch diameter lower ram for final compression, and is capable of safely generating forces approaching 400 tons. In combination with the fully-integrated plastic strapping system, the press runs automatically to produce 500-pound Universal Density bales ready for warehousing.

But this is not where the story ends, because along the way through the ginning process, cleaning takes place at almost every step. The dust, trash, and motes (under-developed seeds and fiber) removed from the cotton are swept away through a partition wall into the fan room at the rear of the building. The dust and trash are then sent outside through a high efficiency plenum chamber and cyclone bank to remove the solids from the conveying air, and allow the air to leave the system without creating unwanted air pollution. The motes are also sent through a set of cyclones for collection into a common air stream without any moving parts, or the conventional use of screw conveyors. Designing and balancing all of these air streams is no easy task, but this is yet another area where the engineering expertise offered by Cherokee really shines. The motes are then cleaned with a special mote cleaner to bring the greatest possible value before they are baled in a mote press. It is interesting to note that this new gin produces trash with less fiber and three times as many cotton bales per mote bale than the old gin plant at Monette Co-op. This is an important economic point for both growers and gin operators, because more lint ends up in the cotton bale instead of the lesser-value mote bale or the trash pile. And finally, after the cotton seed is removed from the fiber at the gin stands, the seed is dropped into an air stream generated by a positive-displacement blower, which gently conveys it nearly 400 feet to the seed house located farther back on the property. The seed house has both in-floor and above-floor aeration, and a capacity of 10,000 tons.

Roy Owens Construction is based in Malden, Missouri, and has been in business since 1967, specializing in high-quality, pre-engineered industrial buildings, cotton gin construction, and machinery installation. Cherokee has been around since 1994, but the people behind the name are certainly no strangers to the industry. Over 650 years of combined experience in agricultural equipment goes into the manufacturing of every machine at Cherokee, with nearly 200 years of combined engineering experience to back it up. When Monette Co-op decided to replace their old gin plant, they chose to work together with Cherokee to plan what has become a shining example of a state-of-the-art ginning facility. Commitment to meeting the high expectations from Monette Co-op was evident. In fact, Roy Owens Construction and Cherokee provided a continuous daily presence on-site from the day they broke ground, until the ginning season was half completed. The plant layout, buildings, construction, engineering, equipment, installation, and start-up were all provided in a single package, proving that Cherokee truly offers complete ginning solutions.