EP Cambridge in the News

By Verity Edwards
The Australian
May 6, 2013

THE Australian alpaca industry has rebounded from droughts and poor world financial markets to see a record national sale price for its top competition macho, with an Adelaide Hills male selling for $175,000.

EP Cambridge stud owner Matthew Lloyd said the macho alpaca Invictus, which was last year named the nation’s supreme champion, was sold to a New Zealand breeder for the record price.

“There have been lots of ups and downs but it dawned on me about five or six years ago that no matter what you’re in, whether it be racehorses or pigeons or alpacas, no matter how small the market is, there’s always an appetite for the very best,” Mr Lloyd said.

“Provided we constantly show and perform, and clients are doing well with their alpacas on the world stage, it’s a good business.”

Business is indeed booming, with the Lloyds’ Oakbank farm of about 2500 breeders – thought to be the largest pedigree stud in the world – supplying alpacas to farms to guard sheep against foxes, fleece for clothing, blankets and other textiles, and for the growing meat consumption trade.

With a growing taste for alpaca meat on Australia’s east coast, particularly in Sydney, alpacas are fetching up to $250 each for processing.

The industry has also taken off in Europe, where the couple now owns a smaller stud farm of 1000 alpacas and has moved into retailing products from their high-quality fleece.

For the Lloyds, however, their entry into the alpaca world came almost by accident 20 years ago.

The couple bought a former turf farm near McLaren Vale with plans to plant vineyards in the wine region after selling part of the family aviation business, Lloyd Helicopters, in 1994.

Realising the turf farm had stripped layers of soil and nutrients from the ground, Mr Lloyd and his wife Cathy bought six alpacas instead.

With a growing need for strong genetics the couple travelled to Peru in 2001 and sorted through thousands of alpacas to choose 300 of the best, one by one, to import here.

“We were paying $1000 per head which was unheard of, so people were walking their alpacas for days to us,” Mr Lloyd said.

The Lloyds are now selling the best of their macho breeders for more than $50,000 each – more than most rams these days – with repeat customers from Norway and The Netherlands due to visit next month to buy up.

“There are daughter studs around the world and they’ve proven genetics and coming back to get the next generation.”

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