From farm to fashion, Eastern Cape mohair is making its mark on the ramp despite a period of crippling disruptions caused by Covid-19 and the ongoing drought.
The SA Mohair Cluster (SAMC) in partnership with SA Fashion Week (SAFW) held a webinar this week, “From Fibre to Finished Product”, to outline the mohair supply chain.
This highlighted its key importance not only for exports — 95% of SA mohair heads overseas, mostly to China and Italy — but also for local designers.
Nicknamed the “diamond fibre”, mohair can be transformed into a soft and lustrous yarn with impressive dye retention, elasticity and resilience, making it a raw material sought after by designers.
SAMC and SAFW presented the Diamond Fibre Collections in an online fashion show in April, which featured mohair ranges by designers Lukhanyo Mdingi, Mmuso Maxwell and Judith Atelier.
In an interview on Thursday, Mohair SA general manager Marco Coetzee outlined how prices for mohair had plummeted in 2020, but now were recovering as demand increased again.
“We could not export over the early months of Covid but the market started to come back in September and the big focus for those brands was purchasing sustainable products as far as possible,” Coetzee said.
“We launched our Responsible Mohair Standard just before Covid so that put the industry in a good position.
“December was the biggest export month for the entire year — the price started to increase significantly since then.
“The price of mohair is now around R400/kg whereas at the low point of 2020 it was R220/kg.
“Demand has boomed since the beginning of the year and that puts the producer in a better frame of mind.”
At the webinar on Wednesday, African Expressions sales consultant Roxanne Maddocks, of SAMIL Natural Fibres, gave an overview of machine and hand-knitted yarns available.
A bonus for designers was that it could take on intense colours, with more than 500 shades in the African Expressions range.
However, Maddocks said there was “a lot less fibre on the market than a few years ago”, partly due to the drought farmers were facing across the country’s major mohair regions.
After a year with foot-and-mouth disease outbreaks, as well as the severe regional drought, the mohair industry in 2020 then faced the impact of the coronavirus outbreak.
In previous years, about 800 commercial producers in the Eastern Cape released about 2.23-million kilogrammes of fibre annually, with 95% of it exported.
However, the international travel bans over Covid-19 affected exports, particularly to China.
The SAMC started the Diamond Fibre Collections project not only to highlight mohair’s versatility but also to show its commitment to small, medium and micro enterprises (SMMEs), particularly over this difficult time.
Coetzee said the partnership with SAFW would continue.
HeraldLIVE
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