BY Marcella Echavarria | March 1, 2012

Peru’s many national treasures

Camelids are as old as the Andes. South American camelids include llamas, alpacas, guanacos, and vicuñas, all animals native to the Andes where mountain life revolves around them. Today as in pre-Inca times, alpacas and llamas were a treasured commodity, utilized for garments, hides, fertilizer, fuel, and meat. The llama further provided them with a means of transportation in the harsh conditions of the Andean highlands. Andean Indians make use of everything from their hair to their droppings. Dried llama meat (charqui) nourishes them, its fleece keeps them warm, the hide is used for leather products, their longest hairs for ropes, and droppings are burned as fuel to ward off the chill of the highlands.

Of all the animals found by the Spaniards during the colony, camelids were a separate group because of their uniqueness and their special relation with humans. They were the driving force of the Incas full of utilitarian and symbolic functions. They were described as “local sheep” of great cultural significance.

The specialized breeding of alpacas for fiber production was developed around 500 B.C by the Pukara indians in the Lake Titicaca region of Southern Peru who were the first true alpaca breeders. Alpacas are kept in herds that graze on the Andean highlands of southern Peru, northern Bolivia, Ecuador, and northern Chile at an altitude of 3,500 m to 5,000 m above sea level.

The Incas were remarkably successful in refining the domestication of the alpaca. Archaeologists have found mummified remains of alpacas at ritual Incan burial sites whose fiber is far finer than any modern day alpacas. It was the Incas who developed the alpaca into the two distinct fleece types, the huacaya and the less common suri. However, the Spanish invasion of 1532 destroyed the organized breeding program established by the Incas. The enormous alpaca herds were all but eliminated. Survivors were forced into the higher punas in the altiplano while the prime grazing lands were taken by the Spaniards for their more valued sheep and cattle. The alpacas ran together with llama herds in the inhospitable altiplano amidst rough landscapes and freezing temperatures. It is believed that the unsupervised breeding and cross breeding was the cause of the decline in the quality of the alpaca's fiber.

Today, though, camelids reach beyond their mountain homes and into the world in the form of great variety of yarns. Alpaca threads are mixed with silk, pima cotton or bamboo. There is also boucle and handspun alpaca using pushka or traditional hand methods. There are chemically dyed yarns, of course. But there are also vegetable dyes in use, including carmine which grows from cactus, purple corn, nogal, eucaliptus and many Andean leaves and seeds. The world of camelid fibers is infinite and Perú is the heart of it. 


Two groups in Perú lead the camelid revolution: Grupo Inca and Michell. Both have alpaca farms in Puno well positioned brands. They have vertically integrated strategies that go from the farm all the way to sales of goods under premium brand names in Perú and internationally.    

Today, there are approximately 4,000,000 alpacas in Peru, with much lower numbers in Bolivia, and Chile. Perú is the largest producer of alpaca fiber in the world. Although there are a few large landowners with sophisticated breeding programs in Peru, the majority of the alpacas are being bred and raised by the pastores campesinos, who are highland Indians herdsmen living in great poverty. This lifestyle of subsistence is very limited and does not allow for surplus income or sophisticated breeding programs. This is where big industrial players such as Grupo Michell and Grupo Inca come into place with social programs that aim to elevate the quality of life in the highlands.

Michell’s alpaca farm, Mallkini, is located in the highlands of Puno. Mallkini is a large alpaca ranch, research and adventure centre where visitors can learn about alpacas and practice eco-adventure sports like llama trekking, horseback riding or hiking through the gorgeous landscape under blue skies and at fairly chilly temperatures. All year long about three thousand alpacas serve as a greeting committee for visitors to the ranch, but in the rainy season over 1,000 youngsters join the throng.

Mallkini focuses mainly on alpaca breeding, research and high impact social projects – but there is also a modern hotel with six suites ready for alpaca enthusiasts and those looking for an authentic experience in the highlands of Perú. The property is surrounded by a forest of native species intermingled with newly planted eucalyptus trees. There are rivers, creeks, birds of all kinds, and the vast panoramas of the highlands. Moises Asparrin, Malkini’s farm manager, planned to stay at the farm for three months. That was twelve years. He was seduced not by the landscape or even by the salary. “The main thrust of Mallkini is its role as a social project. We improve the animals and share them with the communities so that they too can have good animals producing fiber that can be sold at a good price – which allows them to have a dignified life in the mountain. We have also started a sort of boarding school near Mallkini so that kids that live three hours away on foot or horseback can get a good education and have choices available to them both personally and professionally.”

Michell’s efforts to soften fibers and make value-added use of camelid fibers has been a priority since 2000 when the company started a program to increase the fineness of alpaca fibers through selective breeding. The idea is to produce camelid fibers that can compete with mohair, cashmere and quiviut. Using mathematics, statistics and adopting state of the art technology, Michell’s is making progress. The results will be fibers of higher perceived value on the international market – good for the company – but also the creation of jobs and income which will improve the lives of many highland villagers.

In Arequipa, owner Derek Michell shows us one of the most important aspects of their business: sorting the fiber, which is something that needs to be done by hand and requires very good eyes and sensitive hands. Fibers are sorted in batches, separated according to their 52 natural colors and textures. Once sorted, fibers are washed, separated, scoured, carded, dyed and spun into yarn dyed according to international color trends. The Michell Group provides work to more than 2,500 people through its companies and sells its products in more than 35 countries around the world.

Incalpaca, another leader in the camelid industry in Perú, sponsors an experimental station called Pacomarca, committed to helping individual alpaca breeders develop their businesses sustainably. Pacomarca seeks to generate benefits for all those involved in the alpaca production chain, and especially for the thousands of rural families who make a living from this resource in the challenging cold of the Peruvian highlands. The idea came about from the need to promote the human development of alpaca producers through their links with the modern world of textiles and to respond to the important changes occurring in social and economic areas as well as in climate.  

For the past 12 years, Grupo Inca has been carrying out a very advanced program for the genetic improvement of alpacas on behalf of the owners of small herds in the Peruvian Andes. The genetic improvement carried out at the Pacomarca ranch is aimed at establishing a type of animal that retains the best fineness of alpaca fiber but, at the same time, considerably reducing the variability and eliminating as far as possible the guard hairs, or fibers coarser than 30 microns diameter, as well as avoiding the contaminating fibres of contrasting tone (kemps). In order to accomplish this, the most modern technological instruments are used together with state-of-the-art genetic methodology to achieve the objective and, later on, enable the desired animals to be distributed among the thousands of Andean alpaca herdsmen.  From the beginning, the Pacomarca ranch established a principle: that everything tried and learned would be shared with the smallholding alpaca herdsmen in Peru.  Pacomarca is therefore constantly host to groups of alpaca producers who are offered training courses where newly acquired knowledge is shared with them on aspects such as shearing techniques, animal health, reproduction, feeding, data storage, genetic management, selection of animals and the handling of pasture and forage. The alpaca producers can thus compare physically, and for the first time in Perú, the tangible results of a genetic improvement programme put into practice. Pacomarca sponsors a group of mothers from Llalli who have created the company “Flor de Llalli”. They are trained to produce good quality textliles. Kuna is Grupo Inca’s brand of high end textiles resulting from their vertically integrated strategy.

“International demand for camelid fibers is approximately 5,000 to 5,500 tons annually and Perú produces between 4,000 and 4,500 tons annually. Because it is a limited/niche demand, any increase makes prices skyrocket, 30-40-50 percent from one season to the next. Therefore, if offer becomes more organized by fiber quality, prices would be more stable” affirms Raul Rivera, Michell’s Marketing Director.

The main challenge that the industry faces as a whole is to improve the quality of the fiber, to duplicate the offer of baby alpaca and suri and to work on innovation and product development of finished products with high design content. These collective effort is led by the industry with a very clear social component in mind: the Andean herdsmen need to progress together with the companies because it is them who carry the legacy and who endure the very harsh lifestyle which makes it possible for the world to enjoy warm luxury fibers.

To learn more, please visit the following sites:
www.mallkini.com.pe
www.michell.com.pe
www.mfhknits.com.pe
www.pacomarca.com
www.grupoinca.com