The Western Cape town of Paarl is the centre of South Africa’s tiny, but fast-growing, alpaca industry. In five years, about 1Â 000 of these woolly natives have been imported from South America.
“It’s a growing industry, so the start-up and initial costs are high and the returns are slow, but it’s very good to get into. You can start with a few animals and grow the herd on the side, so that eventually, you have much more animals,” says Udo Mettendorf, who imports and breeds alpacas.
Alpacas are related to llamas, and are prized for their fine fleece. Alpaca promoters say their product can compete with cashmere, and, being much rarer, is more sought after. But alpaca wool is produced in far smaller quantities — about 4Â 000 tons a year worldwide — and is currently little more than an upstart competitor.
Cashmere wool is used to make the world’s finest sweaters and blankets. It is estimated that a mere 6 500 tons of pure cashmere is produced in the world.
Mettendorf says the textile industry could easily switch from cashmere to alpaca wool.
Cashmere goats are farmed mainly in India and China where there is increased desertification and the United Nations has expressed concern about the goats’ impact on the environment. Alpacas have less of an impact on the environment, thanks to their padded feet and they are grazers, which means they do not strip trees and shrubs. They’re already farmed successfully in Australia and the United States, as well as their native lands of Peru, Chile and Bolivia.
Small-scale farmers find alpacas easy to keep. “A lot of people want to live on the land, in smallholdings, although they are not actually farmers. Alpacas are ideal for smaller areas, [as] 5ha is already enough for a herd. You can add value on a small area. It’s not like sheep, where you need a large area to add value,” says Mettendorf.
But alpacas are expensive. A gelded male sells for R8 000. A pregnant female costs about R30 000, and a breeding male even more. Mettendorf says these prices will drop in years to come as more locally born animals are available for sale. “Even if the price comes down 300%, it will still be viable,” he says, as alpacas are a rare commodity.
Alpaca breeder Dietmar Kriel admits that it is not possible to recoup the investment cost from selling the wool. The real money, he says, lies in breeding the animals.
“It’s the most luxurious fibre you can get,” Kriel says, but because it is produced in such small quantities, processing is not yet on an industrial scale.