 COPROCA S.A, the camelid product company, is the first and only alpaca wool company in the hands of Bolivia’s rural population. This company sprouted from the association of 1400 llama and alpaca producers from the Bolivian Altiplano. Their principal objective is to promote sustainable development of camelid breeding by spinning and marketing their wool and derivative products, which we relate below.
Bolivia has a very well-developed gross production of wool with 400,000 head of alpaca, but there was no national infrastructure capable of converting this raw material into an end product ready to be used in textile manufacture until 1991.
Before that time, wool was worked by hand, which obliged artisans to sell it at a price less than the cost of production, or it was sold at a low price to Peruvian factories.
Breeding of camelids for meat and fiber is the main economic activity of 1.5 million Altiplano peasants, i.e. 15% of the population. It has been the primary economic activity since ancestral times and, to date, 100% of this activity is in the hands of Aymara and Quechua associations and enterprises. Adding value to the alpaca wool and its market therefore signifies an improvement in the living conditions of Altiplano peasants.
In 1991, Bolivian alpaca and llama breeders were members of an association called the Asociación Integral de Ganaderos de Camélidos de los altos Andes (AIGACAA), or the Integrated Association of Camelid Breeders of the High Andes, decided to found COPROCA S.A. in order to be able to negotiate and sell their own wool. Therefore, it is a “ground-up” enterprise created to share the producers’ initiative.
There are currently 45 individuals working in the factory, and the yarn, which is high quality thanks to the industrialized process, is sold locally as well as in the international market through organizations like Caserita.com.
COPROCA serves 30% of the Bolivian alpaca wool market and unites 50% of the alpaca producers in the country. It provides 70% of the La Paz, Cochabamba, Oruro, Potosí and Sucre artisans, and more than 90% of the garments made with this wool are exported to Europe, the US and Asia.
COPROCA article: Youtube - IDH PNUD
Wool manufacturing process:
 1.Fleece collection
The raw material is gathered on the lower level of the factory directly from the indigenous alpaca and llama producers from different Altiplano communities.
 2. Classification
Experts very carefully classify the fibers based on their quality and color.
There are four different qualities: Baby alpaca (21 - 22 microns), Super fine (24 - 25.5 microns), Adult (27 - 28.5) and Thick (30 - 33.0 microns) and 16 natural colors: white, black, brown, gray and their variants.
 3. Washing
The fiber washing process consists of removing the oils from the fiber in order to obtain clean wool with 0.5% tolerance of residual oil. This step is carried out industrially with a machine called Leviathan, potable water and industrial, biodegradable detergent.
 4.Combing
Thanks to the consecutive operations of carding, semi-combing and combing, a fine, pure fiber is obtained that is immediately wound onto spools, called “tops.”
 5.Spinning
This step is also done on a machine that is especially calibrated to spin camelid fibers, and it yields yarn at different thicknesses and ranges of color.
 6. Dyeing
An autoclave for dyeing skeins is used to change the natural color with chemical pigments and obtain different colors of yarn.
 7. Inspection
The yarn is inspected by experts in order to obtain a high quality and flawless finished product.
 8.Sale
Finally at the last stage, the yarn is sold to the consumer, either directly in the factory store, at a shop downtown that is located on Sagarnaga, a street where the artisan stall keepers are concentrated in La Paz.
This entire process of treating the alpaca wool, particularly the carding and spinning, is a very difficult task to do by hand because the yarn must be uniform in order to achieve good quality. Besides, hand treatment takes an interminable time and produces a lower quality that cannot be sold at a price that covers production costs.
In addition, COPROCA is a cooperative. It functions with a social development objective and has a great, positive impact on Bolivian artisans. COPROCA yarn is high quality while at the same time being produced with self-respect and concern for development and sustainability.
For all these reasons, even though the process is not completely artisanal, Caserita.com is working with COPROCA which it has been supporting since 2006, re-selling their products on the international market.
Source:
http://www.coprocabolivia.com
http://pac.caf.com/historia.asp?idn=33
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