Features Of Alpaca Fibre

Our alpacas mostly live in small family herds of 50 to 100 animals in the Peruvian Andes. There are thousands of small farmers who live from alpaca breeding, lovingly care for their animals and keep them outdoors all year round, with plenty of exercise included. The shearing traditionally takes place once a year and only takes a few minutes. Afterwards the fibres are sorted by hand according to colour and fineness. This traditional selection is a demanding craft that only few people master. Our alpaca wool is further processed in our own production facilities in Cusco, Arequipa and Lima in Peru. Here we guarantee fair wages, secure jobs and above-average social security.

Would you like to learn more? You can find more about the fair and sustainable production of the brands APU KUNTUR and KUNA on the brand pages.

No, of course we do not use the fibres of alpaca babies. Baby Alpaca is the name of one of the highest quality grades of alpaca. Baby alpaca refers to extremely fine and high-quality alpaca fibres. These are as incredibly fine as they would normally only be found in the very youngest alpacas. To belong to this fineness class, the average hair must not be thicker than 22.5 microns (also called micron). This high fineness provides many incredibly great wearing qualities - for example, the silky sheen, high durability and light feel.

Our alpaca range is particularly suitable for allergy sufferers! Alpaca wool contains hardly any wool fat - so-called lanolin. Lanolin is an animal fat that occurs in sheep‘s wool and can be irritating to the skin. However, as alpaca wool is almost completely lanolin-free, it is ideal for allergy sufferers, babies and people with sensitive skin. Our alpaca jumpers, cardigans, scarves, hats, gloves and even thermal underwear are therefore completely safe to wear.

It is very easy to care of alpaca garments.

Alpaca is dirt repellent and antibacterial this means it´s superfine structure ensures that odours are absorbed extremely slowly and ideally disappear again quickly. If you want to give your alpaca jumper freshness after wearing it, simply hang it up for airing on the balcony or in the bathroom - instead of washing it completely. After only a few hours any odours and wrinkles will disappear without trace!

The alpaca fibre is also very durable. This means it is crease-resistant and, with the right care, does not form any nodules after washing.

You should avoid heat and too much detergent when washing - they are actually the biggest enemies of alpaca wool. Since alpaca clothing can otherwise quickly lose its shape, it should be washed either by hand or in the washing machine‘s hand washing programme - and it is best to use a gentle detergent for wool.

After washing, simply pull the garment carefully into shape and leave to air dry. Do not hang it up, but simply lay it down flat, otherwise the knitwear will warp and lose its shape. Do not tumble dry, otherwise the fibre structure will shrink.

The fineness of alpaca fibre or wool is measured in „microns“. Here the diameter of the animal hair is measured. The smaller the hair, the finer and higher quality the garment feels. There are different classes of fineness, whereby we always use only the 3 finest alpaca precious hairs - i.e. Royal Alpaca, Baby Alpaca and Superfine Alpaca. The alpaca fibres we process have a fineness of 19 - 27 microns, which corresponds on average to between 0.019 - 0.027 millimetres! This wonderful fineness is one reason for the many advantages of alpaca fibre. For comparison: human hair has a thickness of 70 microns.