Strategy for alpaca producers in the works

Wednesday, April 30, 2008

by SUSAN MANN

It costs Ontario farmers $30 to $35 a pound to have their alpaca fleece spun into skeins of yarn at one of Ontario’s mini mills, says Alpaca Ontario president James Cole, who farms near Peterborough. At those prices many farmers just bag their fleece and leave it in their barns.

For those who push ahead, however, there are also the costs of turning the yarn into goods that have to be taken into account.

Cole says he pays $3 to $5 per pair for a sock manufacturer in Quebec to turn it into a finished product that can be sold at retail stores. He sends the yarn to Quebec because there aren’t any large-scale facilities in Ontario to turn yarn into finished products.

“In Canada right now we really don’t have a lot of infrastructure for this so it’s difficult to get the costs down,” he explains.

Another problem alpaca farmers face is a long turn around time. Cole says they shear their animals in June but don’t get their finished yarn back until September or October.

Cole says the industry needs a national strategy so it can grow from the small cottage industry it is now into a more commercial enterprise that produces a guaranteed product of reliable quality and quantity.

He sees such a strategy as not only tackling how to sort and grade the fleece but also create a trademark for alpaca products similar to the Woolmark label for wool. “From a national point of view it would be more like developing an alpaca brand and then standardizing the quality of the product you’re making,” he said.

He emphasizes the need as well for a strategy to also look at how to introduce larger scale processing in Ontario. He points out there’s only one organization in Canada, the Canadian Camelid Fibre Cooperative based in Alberta, which is capable of processing larger amounts of fleece into yarn. The Coop can also turn that yarn into finished products and distribute it to retailers. But it isn’t cost effective for Ontario’s farmers to ship their fleece to Alberta for processing although some do. (The Co-op is looking at the feasibility of opening a depot in eastern Canada so members wouldn’t have to ship their fibre to Alberta, says Jill MacLeod, a Co-op spokesperson).

It’s these sorts of concerns that is motivating Alpaca Canada, the producers’ national organization, to develop a strategy for promoting the fibre, says Catherine Simpson, president of Alpaca Canada.

The strategy will assess the market potential of the fibre, assess how much of it producers have and measure producers’ willingness to use a national-based organization for processing.

Providing education to standardize the industry is another goal. Simpson points out that the industry is fairly spread out across Canada and farmers experience levels with fibre sorting and grading varies greatly.

It’s expected the strategy will be done by the end of the summer. The George Morris Centre is facilitating its development.

Alpacas produce a soft, high quality fibre comparable to cashmere. The fibre is regarded as hypoallergenic. BF