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ALPACAS
MAGAZINE
Alpaca is said to be the fibre of the gods,
but Australia’s alpaca fleece market
has yet to reach stellar heights. A new
concept, Premium Alpaca, is hoping to
change all that, aiming to increase inter-
national demand for the luxury fibre.
The aim of a large consortium of growers
across Australia is to develop a commer-
cially viable market for alpaca fleece by
producing consistent, sizeable consign-
ments of high-quality fibre. Many alpaca
owners produce only a few kilograms of
fleece each year and usually give it away
to home spinners, or it sits in their sheds.
But Premium Alpaca is marketing the
fleece in bales of about 100 kilograms.
[
Editor’s note:
a kilogram is approximately
2.2 pounds.]
The first Premium Alpaca bales were
offered at auction in mid-December at
Fremantle in Western Australia. All three
fleece bales sold were from South Austral-
ian breeders and realized about 10 percent
more than the highest advertised price at
the time. They were the only fleece bales
to sell in the 21-bale auction, going to
Australasian company Alpaca Ultimate.
The finest 20.2-micron bale made $20.35
a kilogram, the 22.2M bale $15.40/kg, and
the 23.6M bale $12.10/kg.
[
Editor’s note:
these values are in Australian dollars.]
Premium Alpaca hopes to hold another
sale in March 2012. Its national coordinator,
Paul Vallely, Crookwell, New South Wales,
says it is the first time a concerted effort
has been made to build a commercially
viable market.
Premium Alpaca is a natural progres-
sion from the Ultrafine bale scheme,
which has produced the world’s finest
alpaca bale three times in the past five
years. Alpaca has been used in prestige
garments but market analysis during the
scheme shows there is a market for
“high standard” fibre up to 26μ to 28μ.
“We found that there was a place for
alpaca in the top-shelf range, but the
crucial thing from our market analysis
was that we have to reduce the variation
in fibre diameter within consignments,
and we need commercial volumes, not
10-20kg,” Vallely said. “The average
alpaca grower has only 10-30 kilograms
of fibre, so the industry is highly
fragmented with a whole range of colours
and fibre diameter—it is useless to market
unless it is a uniform consignment of
commercial volume.”
Vallely, who owns Australian Alpaca
Fibre Testing, says Premium Alpaca is not
a fee-paying association but simply a set
of breeding and marketing tools. About
150 alpaca breeders have participated in
a training program on clip-preparation
standards. Fleeces are taken to a central
collection point in their region and skirted
twice. They are then objectively measured
using an OFDA machine, classed for
length and strength and grouped into
2μ increments.
Vallely, who is also a superfine wool
grower, says the alpaca industry needs
to learn from the wool industry, with the
classing requirements of Premium Alpaca
based on superfine wool. Premium Alpaca
has worked with the Australian Wool
Testing Authority and the Australian Wool
Exchange on a set of standards for fleece
preparation and presentation to produce
low levels of coarse fibres and low levels of
contamination.
Wanted:
More Alpaca Fleece
BY CATHERINE MILLER
Reprinted by permission of
Stock Journal,
Jan. 12, 2012 Issue
INTERNATIONAL
Industry News
Bales of fleece under the Premium Alpaca brand sold in the first alpaca fibre auction
in Western Australia in December, 2011.
South Australian alpaca breeders Heather Austin, Honey Lindner, Rosalie Brink-
worth, and Bernadette Duncker at a fleece-collection day in the Adelaide Hills.
Photoscourtesyof
StockJournal