Cashmere is adored and loved by fashion designers and luxury fashion houses around the world and for very good reason…cashmere is an extraordinary fibre and their customers love it. It’s incredibly soft, fantastically warm and beautiful to wear. No other fabric screams special, unique and distinctive in the same way. It is for these reasons this amazing fibre continues to be so highly sought after woven and knitted into the softest most exquisite fabric.
One of the ‘noble fibres’, cashmere sits alongside vicuna, camel, qiviut (musk ox), merino and yak. Only 6,000 tonnes of cashmere is produced annually, mainly in China and Mongolia. This compares to more than two million tonnes of wool. The international cashmere market is about US$3.1billion of the US$60 billion natural fibre market and is growing at 3.86%.
David and Robyn Shaw farm this beautiful fibre and their cashmere goats as part of their farming business on the north side of the Catlin Ranges in South Otago. Their unique flock has been built up over 35 years of breeding. It is an accumulation of numerous flocks over that time and selected lines of the best from thousands of animals across Australia and New Zealand. Today they farm over 1,800 goats, approximately 800 kids being born this spring.
The cashmere is superb quality, being super white, long, high curvature and as fine as 12 microns. Breeding has produced fluffy high yielding cashmere fleeces. Fibre genetic traits have very high heritability so genetic improvement is rapid. Most kids are born white and produce high-value fine cashmere. The best does now shear up to half-a-kilo, with a value between $110 to $150 per kilogram depending on grades. Cashmere down from the hogget fleeces (10 months) averaged 14 microns and the doe flock averaged 16 microns.
Goats grow cashmere as a winter coat. The fleeces have two fibres – guard hairs and down. The down typically grows from the longest day to the shortest and naturally sheds in the spring. It is collected by shearing in August before it releases from the skin and falls on to the ground. Being a double fibre fleece cashmere has to go through special dehairing machines which separate them.
David and Robyn’s company New Zealand Cashmere has been working closely with highly regarded Christchurch leisure fashion house Untouched World and Lower Hutt yarn manufacturers Woolyarns to grow supply. These companies were both pivotal in developing the now famous possum merino blends for the luxury wool market. Both companies are excited about showcasing New Zealand cashmere and its unique provenance and heritage story. Working together as trusted partners farmers to consumer, they can deliver sustainability and traceability throughout the supply chain.
New Zealand Cashmere is now offering the opportunity for like-minded farmers to work with them to develop the national flock into a resurgent, premium, export industry. An increasing group of farmers is working with New Zealand Cashmere establishing new flocks. They are actively encouraging new starts and can assist with advice and genetics.
“What hasn’t changed is the demand, positioning and value of cashmere. In the prestige and luxury fashion world, it reigns supreme and we can be part of it. ”
Goats make great farm animals. They integrate well with other stock enhancing clover growth which help cattle and lambs grow faster. All weeds become valuable forage – thistles, briar, broom, blackberry, wilding pines. Being very environmentally friendly they have a light footprint, avoid waterways and are perfect for nutrient-challenged catchments and pastoral farming that requires new prospects. Starting from the resilient feral population, these special goats now provide the opportunity to produce a super-premium fibre in regions outside the normal merino range. Ferals thrive and have adapted to New Zealand since Cook released goats on his first voyage in 1773. With some wool struggling to cover the cost of shearing these goats provide a real alternative. They multiply quickly and lower costs and can be added at low intensity without displacing existing stock.
Current cashmere volumes are growing but the early target is 25,000 goats. This would initially supply 5-10 tonnes of cashmere. The market could consume many times that.
David and Robyn Shaw are excited about what they see as the renaissance of a dormant New Zealand cashmere industry.
