Flock maintaining, brand strengthening, and market expanding: Nepal's pashmina producers are aiming high
High in the Himalayas, what are the goats tended to by mountain dwellers in remote areas worth?
The answer, of course, is that it depends. For those who tend to flocks of fuzzy Himalayan mountain goats, often the value of the goat lies in the meat, which herders can consume themselves, or readily sell.
But the pashmina producers of Kathmandu are hoping to break with this convention, convincing Nepali herders that the wool their free-ranging goats produce is precious and profitable. And, they hope to forge new ways for that wool to get to city processing centres and — ultimately — onto the heads, necks and shoulders of people across the globe.
Nepal Pashmina Industries Association (NPIA) Vice President Vijoy Dugar said, "The areas of the Himalayas where these farmers live are so remote that in the past it would take a week to reach them. But now they are better connected by roads, and have begun to purchase wool from newly-formed cooperatives to be manufactured in Kathmandu."