URUMQI -- Cotton processors in Northwest China's Xinjiang Uygur autonomous region are planning to build a cotton trading center in the country's largest cotton planting area.

The center will be located in the Xinjiang Huijin Logistics Garden, Korla city, in southern Xinjiang. It will be jointly supported by 17 cotton purchase and processing enterprises with a total investment of 1.5 billion yuan ($242 million).

The first phase of the project, with an investment of nearly 300 million yuan, will have a storage capacity of 600,000 tons, while the second-phase project will bring that capacity to 3.6 million tons.

Besides storage, the center will cooperate with other cotton future centers in the country to make it a complex platform for cotton logistics, trade and transaction.

Xinjiang is China's most important cotton planting area, with its output accounting for more than half of the national total.