It is reasonable to say that the Australian Alpaca industry began as a speculative investment industry in the late 1980’s. The industry grew rapidly and attracted investment from people with diverse backgrounds and during the speculative phase of the industry economics of scale mattered little, nor did production costs because of the very high sale price of stock.
Over the last three to four years the speculative phase of the industry has begun to wane and increasingly, new investment in the industry and individual enterprise profitability is determined by careful consideration of economies of scale, production costs, management practices and farm gate sale price for the industry’s major commodity, fibre.
This project was initiated to develop a software budgeting program tool that would allow producers and investors to objectively assess enterprise profitability and examine the likely financial consequences of major management decisions.