Last updated on October 31st, 2026 at 03:11 pm
Cassava starch in the textile industry does its most important work before a single piece of cloth exists. It coats cotton warp yarns so they survive thousands of loom strokes, and then enzymes wash it away before dyeing begins.
I produce oven-dried cassava starch in Ntigha, Abia State, and my buyers are cooks and bakers rather than weaving mills.
Yet starch has protected warp yarns on looms for more than a century, and cassava starch performs well in that job.
This post discusses what starch does inside a textile mill, from sizing yarn to thickening print pastes.
We will compare cassava starch with corn, potato, and synthetic sizes using published test results.
The later sections cover desizing, the competition from synthetic sizes, and why Nigeria’s shrinking textile sector now buys so little local starch.
Table of Contents
What Starch Does in a Textile Mill
| Process | What the starch does |
|---|---|
| Warp sizing | Coats yarn so it resists tension and abrasion during weaving |
| Desizing | The size is broken down and washed out before dyeing |
| Printing | Modified starches and British gums thicken print pastes |
| Finishing | Starch adds body to some fabrics after weaving |
Sizing is the biggest use by far, because every warp yarn on a loom needs protection.
Starch has been the most common sizing agent for more than a century, enzyme maker Novonesis notes.
The other industries that buy cassava starch are compared in industrial uses of cassava starch.
How Warp Sizing Works
Warp yarns run lengthwise on a loom and rub against metal parts while being pulled tight with every pass.
Size coats each yarn with a thin film that helps it withstand that tension and reduces breakage, Novonesis explains.
The film also lays down loose fibers, which reduces hairiness and friction against neighboring yarns.
Mills measure how much size a yarn carries as add-on, the dried size weight as a share of yarn weight.
A 2022 study in the Journal of Engineering Science sized cotton warp with a commercial size made of 70 percent starch.
Warp breakage was lowest at 9.94 percent add-on, while yarn strength rose and hairiness fell between 8.93 and 9.94 percent.
Above that level, breakage climbed again, because the yarn turned rigid under a thick film of size.
So more starch is not always better, and mills tune each recipe to yarn count, fiber, and loom speed.
How Cassava Starch Compares
A 2019 study in the Journal of Textile Science and Engineering sized ring-spun cotton yarn with native corn, cassava, and potato starches.
The researchers tested tensile strength, elongation, abrasion resistance, stiffness, size removal, and loom breakage rates.
Cassava starch showed the best overall performance, followed by potato starch and then corn starch.
Results like these explain why cassava starch in the textile industry remains a serious sizing choice rather than a cheap fallback.
A Thai study in Frontiers in Engineering Innovation Research compared oxidized tapioca starch with a commercial paste of polyvinyl alcohol and acrylic.
Yarn abrasion resistance reached 1,114 revolutions with the oxidized tapioca recipe, against 1,155 for the synthetic paste.
Fabric warp strength measured about 222 newtons with tapioca starch and 243 newtons with the synthetic recipe.
The authors judged the yarn properties quite similar, which suggests modified cassava starch can stand in for much of a synthetic size.
How oxidation and other treatments change starch is set out in how modified starch is made.
Why Size Must Be Removed
Once weaving ends, the starch coating becomes a problem rather than a help.
Size left on the fabric causes poor wetting, which leads to uneven dyeing, shade differences between batches, and printing faults, Novonesis warns.
Mills therefore desize the cloth before bleaching or dyeing, usually with amylase enzymes that break starch chains apart.
Enzymatic desizing with amylases is one of the oldest enzyme processes in textiles, according to a Fibre2Fashion technical article.
Enzymes attack only the starch and spare the cotton, while oxidative desizing can damage the cellulose fibers themselves.
That easy, targeted removal is a real advantage for starch sizes over some synthetic sizing agents.
Cassava Starch in Printing and Finishing
Textile printers need pastes thick enough to hold dye exactly where a pattern requires it.
Chemically modified starches such as hydroxyethyl, methyl, and carboxymethyl starch serve as important print thickeners, the Fibre2Fashion article notes.
British gums, made by dry roasting starch at 135 to 190°C, and acid-treated dextrins also act as binders and adhesives.
Similar roasted and modified starches appear in glue making, as described in cassava starch adhesives.
Why Synthetic Sizes Compete
Faster looms demand tougher sizes, and that pressure has pushed many mills toward acrylic-based synthetic compounds, Fibre2Fashion reports.
Cassava starch keeps its place where cost, easy desizing, and renewable sourcing matter more than maximum loom speed.
Cassava Starch in the Textile Industry in Nigeria
Nigeria once ran more than 160 textile mills employing over 500,000 people in the 1980s, BusinessDay reported in 2014.
By then only ten mills survived, crushed by imports, smuggling, worn machinery, and diesel costs.
The same report put grid power at about 8.3 hours a day for mills, with capacity use down to 44.9 percent in late 2013.
I know that power problem well, because outages still stop the oven that dries my own starch until electricity returns.
In 2023, the textile manufacturers’ association said only three of at least 24 textile firms were functioning properly, BusinessDay noted in December 2025.
Textile imports rose 47 percent to ₦814.3 billion in the first nine months of 2025, the same report adds.
With so few working mills, local demand for textile-grade starch remains small, and most cassava starch buyers here are food users.
Why so little Nigerian cassava reaches factories of any kind is examined in the cassava industry by country.
Limits Worth Knowing
- Quality consistency: sizing recipes need starch with steady viscosity, so every batch must match the last.
- Loom speed: the fastest modern looms commonly need synthetic or blended sizes rather than native starch alone.
- Over-sizing: too much add-on makes yarn rigid and raises breakage, as the 2022 Bangladeshi study found.
- Local demand: Nigeria’s few surviving mills cannot absorb large volumes of domestic textile starch.
Clean settling and drying, the base of any industrial grade, are covered in producing clean cassava starch.
Global starch buyers and prices are tracked in the tapioca starch market, and paper uses in cassava starch for paper.
Other demanding starch markets are covered in cassava starch in medicines and cassava starch bioplastics.
Conclusion
Cassava starch in the textile industry mainly sizes warp yarn, coating it against loom tension before enzymes wash it away.
A 2019 study ranked cassava starch ahead of potato and corn for sizing cotton yarn.
Modified tapioca starch came close to a synthetic polyvinyl alcohol and acrylic paste in Thai tests.
Nigeria’s collapse from over 160 mills to a working handful keeps local demand for textile-grade starch very small.
To ask about clean, oven-dried cassava starch made in Ntigha, send Cassava Pathway a WhatsApp message.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is cassava starch used for in textiles?
Mills mainly use it to size warp yarn, coating each thread against tension and abrasion during weaving.
Modified grades also thicken the pastes used for printing patterns onto fabric.
Is cassava starch better than corn starch for sizing?
A 2019 study found cassava starch gave the best overall sizing performance on cotton yarn.
Potato starch came second, and corn starch ranked third in that comparison.
Why is starch removed from fabric after weaving?
Leftover size causes poor wetting, uneven dyeing, and printing faults on the finished cloth.
Mills usually remove it with amylase enzymes, which break down starch without damaging the cotton.
Can cassava starch replace synthetic sizing agents?
Partly, since oxidized tapioca starch performed close to a polyvinyl alcohol and acrylic paste in Thai tests.
The fastest modern looms still commonly rely on synthetic or blended sizes instead.
Chimeremeze Emeh is a tropical crop farmer and chemical engineer from Ntigha, Isiala Ngwa North LGA, Abia State, Eastern Nigeria, specializing in cassava and palm oil, with over 30 years of hands-on experience growing, harvesting, and processing cassava. He grows TMS series, TME 419, and local traditional varieties on his own farms and operates a small-scale cassava flour and starch production business through Cassava Pathway, which he founded as a CAMA-registered agribusiness in 2024. He is also the founder of Palm Oil Pathway, where he applies the same tropical farming expertise. His farms are located in Ntigha, Abia State.