Great promise in cashmere

Press, 4 March 1983, Page 20

Great promise in cashmere

New Zealand goat farmers have a potential fortune at their fingertips in the cashmere fibre found on much feral, dairy and firstcross stock, according to an Australian fibre buyer, Mr F. Moylan, of Kinross Cashmere Co. Pty, Ltd, of Victoria.

Cashmere must be in a range 15 to 19 microns and pure white cashmere could bring up to $lOO a kilogram to the producer, said Mr Moylan. But feral goats and even first-cross Angora goats commonly clip only 0.5 kg a year and only 150 to a maximum of 400 grams of this clip may be cashmere. ■ The fleeces must also retain at least one third coarser fibres, such as guard hairs for protection for the downy cashmere. And to command the top price, the cashmere fibre must be white, for pale grey fibre was discounted about 25 per cent and brown about 50 per cent. Mr Moylan addressed a Cashmere Goat Seminar at Lincoln College last week as part of a tour around New Zealand promoting cashmere production. His company supplies Australian cashmere to a textile company in Scotland called .Dawsons. That company has a staff of 6000 and handles about 2000 tonnes of cashmere a year, as well as 20,000 tonnes of wool. Mr Moylan said Dawsons

could handle any amount of cashmere and would like to see six to eight million cashmere-producing goats in the South Pacific. Until recently the bulk of the world’s production of cashmere came from China and although that country is still producing the fibre it is now processing it into textiles and woollen goods. This has left a big gap in the world trade in cashmere, as the number of other countries exporting cashmere is very small. New Zealand has an estimated 300,000 feral goats and M.A.F. estimates show that perhaps 5 per cent of these could be selected for worthwhile concentration on production of cashmere. By breeding for fineness, concentrating on reducing coarse medullated fibres and kemps and shearing at times of the year when cashmere is more prevalent, farmers could maximise their production of the fibre. The catch for Angora farmers is that breeding to maximise cashmere would probably cut yields of While cashmere is found principally on ferals, dairy breeds and first crosses with Angoras, the breeding objective of an Angora producer is to move towards fourth, fifth and pure Angoras for the maximum fleeceweights of mohair. Mohair is in the range 20

microns or more and any breeding move into the cashmere micron range would probably also depress fleeceweights. New Zealand mohair has been selling very well, mainly to Japan. A spokesman for the Mohair Producers Association, Mr Richard Macdonald, of Geraldine, said this week that the upper range of his association’s third pool, filling at present, would probably bring $3O a kilogram. At these prices, as even Mr Moylan pointed out. a farmer with Angoras whose clip is measured in kilograms is better off than a farmer with goats whose clip of cashmere is measured in grams. But the visit of Mr Moylan has alerted the N.Z. mohair producers to the world value of the production from their first-cross Angoras and the feral mother stock. Next step for a New Zealand industry would be the utilisation of reliable test equipment- to help breeders in their selection of cashmere-producing goats and the establishment of a pilot plant to separate cashmere, and mohair from coarser hairs. Dr B. R. Wilkinson, head of the Wool Science Department of Lincoln College, said the college’s Wool Measurement Service would be well equipped to undertake such an extension activity.

The service already provides test results for sheep breeders, although it is not an accredited testing house for commercial purposes. It also tests mohair and Dr Wilkinson said he could see nothing which would prevent expansion of this activity to include cashmere. Some technical details, such as the most suitable testing site on the goat, remained to be worked out.

Also some sort of carding machine for separating cashmere from hair would probably be necessary before large numbers of tests could be carried out, said Dr Wilkinson. Mr Moylan had indicated that he could provide such a machine. Dr Wilkinson also said that such cashmere tests might be more expensive than tests conducted by the service on wool. This was because projection microscope determination of fibre thickness would probably be needed to give a more meaningful result than the normal, and cheaper airflow method. Nevertheless a producer interested in determining the fibre characteristics of a promising buck, for instance, might consider that the test fee was a modest charge to give him that information and some advice besides.

Mr Moylan intends making regular visits to New Zealand to help foster the development of a local cashmere production, '