Conditioned weight
Commercial weight
Conditioned (commercial) weight is the weight a lot of yarn would have at the agreed commercial regain, calculated from its weighed mass and measured moisture, so that buyer and seller settle on fibre rather than on water.
Weigh a lot and you weigh fibre plus whatever water it holds that day. To compare a mill's invoice with what arrived at the godown, both have to be put on the same moisture basis. The convention is to work out the oven-dry mass from the measured regain and add back the agreed regain: commercial weight = weighed weight × (1 + agreed regain) ÷ (1 + measured regain).
A worked example. 1,000 kg of cotton yarn arrives at a measured regain of 6%, against a commercial regain of 8.5%. Its oven-dry mass is 1,000 ÷ 1.06 = 943.4 kg, and its commercial weight is 943.4 × 1.085 = 1,023.6 kg. On a commercial basis the lot is heavier than the scale says, because it arrived drier than standard — and a trader who argued gross weight would be short-changing himself.
This is why a short-weight claim on gross weight is weak: yarn that dried on the lorry has lost water, not fibre, and the mill will say so. A claim on conditioned weight compares like with like. A sensible one also allows a tolerance for scale and sampling error before anything is claimed at all.
A hand-held meter reads the outside of a cone, not the oven-dry mass of a carton. Formal disputes are settled by laboratory testing; a calculation from meter readings is an estimate for the conversation that comes first.
Key facts
- Commercial weight = W × (1 + Rs ÷ 100) ÷ (1 + R ÷ 100).
- W = weighed mass; R = measured regain %; Rs = agreed commercial regain %.
- Oven-dry mass = W ÷ (1 + R ÷ 100).
- The ISO 6741 series covers determining the commercial mass of fibre and yarn consignments.
- Hand-held meter readings give an estimate; laboratory oven-drying gives the determination.
Who this affects
Traders and mills settling short-weight claims, and anyone reconciling invoiced weight with received weight.
How YarnTally handles it
Mill short-weight claims (Growth plan) are computed on commercial weight from the invoiced weight and regain, the received weight and an optional meter reading. A claim inside the organisation's tolerance is refused rather than raised; it is valued at the purchase-order price where that is comparable; and the printed note shows every step of the arithmetic so the mill can check it.
See what else it doesReviewed September 2026. This is general information about how these rules work, not tax or legal advice, and thresholds and due dates do change. Check your own position with your chartered accountant before acting on it.