THE FLEECE

Alpaca fleece is soft, durable and lux­u­ri­ous with a silky sheen. Although its chem­i­cal and phys­i­cal qual­i­ties are, in many respects, sim­i­lar to those of sheep wool, it is supe­ri­or to cash­mere and mohair because the fab­ric does not mat or pill. It is warmer, does not scratch, does not con­tain lano­lin and is both hypoal­ler­genic and ther­moreg­u­lat­ing. At the same time, it is nat­u­ral­ly water-repel­lent and flame-resis­tant. Alpaca fibre and sheep’s wool are processed in a very sim­i­lar fash­ion, all the way from prepa­ra­tion, card­ing, spin­ning, and weav­ing as well as finishing.

Hua­caya fleece stands out for its dense, soft, loose fibre, char­ac­terised by a fine wavy tex­ture known as the ‘crimp’. This makes the yarn nat­u­ral­ly elas­tic, so it is ide­al for knit­ted pro­duc­tion meth­ods. On the oth­er hand, the long, straight coat of the suri resem­bles pen­cils or dread­locks: this pro­vides a straighter fibre that is more suit­able for woven fabrics.

Thanks to its unique silky soft­ness and a diver­si­ty of colours (22 inter­na­tion­al­ly defined colours, 90 colour tones and more than 200 blends), alpaca fibre is used by lux­u­ry design­ers for both knit­ted items and tai­lored cre­ations con­sist­ing of pre­mi­um mate­ri­als. It is a scarce and high­ly sought-after material.

When it comes to the qual­i­ty of the fleece, the cru­cial fac­tors are fine­ness (low micron count), high den­si­ty, con­sis­ten­cy and homo­gene­ity (low stan­dard devi­a­tion), uni­form crimp, a silky sheen, and a high aver­age weight. In addi­tion, the ‘han­dle’ is an impor­tant aspect in terms of pro­cess­ing. What mat­ters here is whether the fibre is soft or hard to the touch, regard­less of the degree of fine­ness. The pro­por­tion of top­coat is also sig­nif­i­cant, as this coarse fibre reduces the val­ue of the fleece.

Good ani­mal health is the pre­con­di­tion for a high-qual­i­ty fleece. After all, only a healthy alpaca can sus­tain­ably pro­duce a good fibre over the long term. We there­fore pay very close atten­tion to exact­ing stan­dards of hygiene and clean­li­ness. Fur­ther­more, we embrace our respon­si­bil­i­ty as breed­ers and aim to exclude genet­ic defects. We explic­it­ly aim to elim­i­nate any iden­ti­fi­able influ­ences of gua­na­cos and to pro­duce noth­ing oth­er than top-qual­i­ty fibre.