Peru’s Inca Group is expanding its sustainability efforts with a range of projects designed to support the livelihoods of Peruvian alpaca farmers and boost supply of the fibre.
The Inca Group, which specialises in alpaca tops and yarns and is based in Arequipa, Peru, has established a series of sustainability initiatives designed to support the future of the fibre in its natural home.
The projects are driven by a desire to help Peru’s alpaca farmers, who face mounting economic and climatic challenges due to their dispersion and physical location among the vast high-altitude and mountainous regions of the Andes.
“We therefore consider it a duty, particularly for those of us involved in processing the fibre obtained from alpacas or who use the final products, to afford assistance to those people who devote their lives to rearing these splendid animals,” Alonso Burgos, manager of Inca’s alpaca farm, Pacomarca, told WTiN.
“Our programmes are addressed to the community and represent a part of our corporate social responsibility,” he adds.
“We have direct contact with many of the families that depend on the alpaca as their main source of income. This contact is invaluable to assure the sustainability of the alpaca supply chain and a better livelihood for the communities.”
The Inca Group’s initiatives are being implemented through two key projects: Pacomarca; and Black Alpaka.
Pacomarca
Pacomarca is the Inca Group’s experimental genetic improvement alpaca farm, located 4,000 metres above sea level in the heart of Peru’s main alpaca breeding areas. Home to more than 1,500 alpacas, Burgos says it is a “unique centre of knowledge on the genetics and raising of alpacas, and the technical shearing process.”
Guillermo Lazarte, commercial manager at Inca Tops, adds: “Our objective with Pacomarca is to contribute to the sustainability of alpaca through an improvement in fibre quality. Taking into account the importance of the small-scale Andean alpaca farmers, the aim is for this to enable them to obtain better prices when they sell their product.”
To help meet this objective, at Pacomarca the Inca Group is running a number of social support programmes linked to alpaca sustainability and improving the farmers’ quality of life. These include Inca Shearing and the Quintal del Inca competition.
Inca Shearing
Inca Shearing is a mechanised shearing method that has been developed with the aim of improving the fibre yield when the annual shearing of alpaca fibre takes place, and to guarantee the animal’s wellbeing as well as the physical safety of the shearer.
Lazarte says that the method, which has been officially adopted by the Peruvian Government as the National Technical Standard for shearing, ensures the animal is not harmed and the resulting fibre is sold at a higher price, as there is less contamination from coarse hairs than with previous methods.
Pacomarca offers the Inca Shearing service free to alpaca producers and at the same time ensures they receive direct payment, without the intervention of intermediaries, at the best market prices available, Lazarte explains.
“Moreover, batches of alpaca fibre sheared in this way automatically come under the Pacomarca brand name, thus providing 100% traceability,” he adds.
Quintal del Inca
The Quintal del Inca is an annual alpaca fibre competition open to Peruvian alpaca farmers. The first prize is a fitted-out ecological dwelling called The Herdsman’s Cottage. The competition is for white fibre of the huacayo variety, which is weighed using the quintal unit (equal to 100 Spanish pounds or 46 kg), and for individual fleeces of black huacayo fibre.
The fibre which enters the competition is obtained from the producers at the highest price paid in the market. It is then analysed with regard to different characteristics including fineness, the presence of coloured fibres, fibre density, the incidence of medullated hairs, and the degree of cleanness. Each of these characteristics receives a particular weighted score which contributes to a final overall score. The quintal with the highest score wins the prize.
The prize-giving ceremony takes place at the Pacomarca ranch. Several prizes are awarded and there are demonstrations of best practice shearing procedures and good animal treatment, as well as talks and scientific expositions, along with traditional Andean dancing.
The best selection of fibre obtained in the competition is used to make exclusive collections of alpaca articles, with several made from Alpaca Sixteen, which at 16 microns is the world’s finest alpaca quality.
“All of the income generated from the Quintal del Inca is plowed back into the development of the programmes carried out at Pacomarca,” says Lazarte.
Black Alpaka
The Black Alpaka programme (or Yanapaco in Quechua, an indigenous language of the Peruvian Andes) seeks to rescue the raising of pure black alpacas. Over the past few decades their numbers have decreased dramatically to the point where black alpaca fibre now represents less than 0.5% of Peru’s total alpaca fibre production.
Pacomarca has a specially selected experimental population of approximately 600 alpacas of pure black colour. “These are being used in a genetic evaluation programme and a study of heritability which is the only one of its kind,” says Burgos, adding that this is the largest population of black alpacas on a single farm in the entire country.
“The Yanapaco programme also acquires black alpaca fibre directly from interested producers at a preferential price,” says Lazarte.
Other parts of the initiative include a project for the interchange of black stud alpacas with some selected producers, and a new category in the Quintal del Inca featuring prizes for the best fleeces of pure black colour, designed to provide an incentive to raise these animals.
Green processes
As well as its initiatives assisting Peru’s alpaca farmers, the Inca Group is demonstrating its commitment to sustainability at the Inca Tops mill, where it has installed 1,200 solar panels.
According to the company, this reduced the plant’s CO2 emissions by 2,576 tons between January 2014 and June 2018 – equivalent to the carbon absorbed by 1,227 hectares of forests in one year, with the reduction of a further 500 tons from June 2018 to July 2019.
Inca Tops also biologically treats the wastewater from fibre scouring so it is reused in the same process, and is also reducing the amount of solid waste generated in the factory by using bacterias and producing biogas.
Meanwhile, Inca Tops is introducing fully traceable alpaca yarns, in Sixteen, Majestic, Royal, Baby and Superfine qualities, in its latest collections as part of a new supply chain initiative. It also offers alpaca and wool yarns with Oeko-Tex certification, and cotton yarns with GOTS (Global Organic Textile Standard) certification.
Source: www.wtin.com/