This invention relates to cotton bale covers and, more particularly, to a circular knit cotton cover designed to be used on high density cotton bales.
A wide variety of covers for cotton bales have been used in the past. Those made from jute or burlap are loosely woven permitting contamination of the bale to occur and their low strength causes rips and tears of the cover to develop during handling and storage. Attempts have been made to construct covers of other materials to avoid contamination and tearing. In U.S. Pat. No. 3,647,061 the bale cover disclosed is a laminate of a paper outer layer and a nonwoven cotton inner layer bonded through a polypropylene net with a low melt acrylate. Such construction is expensive and its low air permeability tends to cause mildew. A similar nonwoven cotton laminate cover is shown in U.S. Pat. No. 3,647,139 wherein two nonwoven cotton layers are bonded in a like manner. These covers are also very expensive in comparison to jute and have the further disadvantage of being non-biodegradable. An attempt was then made to produce a knitted cotton cover in U.S. Pat. No. 4,071,138. This bale cover was made from a warp knit fabric having tricot stitch construction. However the bag must be shaped by spiral sewing which adds to its weight, increases cost and reduces its stretch due to the tricot construction and the spiral seams. Synthetic fibers were next used in cotton bale covers. U.S. Pat. No. 4,557,985 teaches the use of a woven polyolefin fabric with resin coating stripes to help reduce fraying as a cotton bale cover. This cover bag has good strength but is non-biodegradable, heavy and expensive to make since it has to be spiral-tubed. An in U.S. Pat. No. 5,104,703 the cotton bale fabric is a single layer nonwoven fiber blend of cotton and polypropylene. Here also the product is not biodegradable and is prepared by spiral tube sewing with reduced stretch in comparison to cotton covers.
The cotton bale cover bag of this invention is completely biodegradable, can easily be recycled due to its jersey stitch construction, has improved stretch and shape conformity characteristics, is light weight, has excellent strength and tear resistance since it has only one seam across the end or bottom portion as it is not spiral sewn and is economically attractive.