Cashmere products can range from as little as USD 40 to as much as USD 2,400. Cashmere made with Mongolian goat wool is considered the highest quality, having the longest and most resilient fibers. Today, 67% of the world’s cashmere comes from Chinese goats, with another 22% coming from their Mongolian cousins. The wool from the country boasts the longest and most resilient fibres at 43 mm in length, compared with 35 mm in China.

According to United Nations sources, 2016 saw a total of USD 1.4 billion worth of cashmere items exported worldwide (in 2010 that figure stood at about USD 1.2 billion). That amounts to about 5 million kilograms of pullovers, jackets, and cardigans.

Cashmere is Mongolia’s third largest official export, after copper and gold. This spring, herders are selling their cashmere to dealers for an average price of 105,000 MNT per kg, which is almost 40,000 MNT higher than last year’s price, indicated reports from the Mongolian Agricultural Commodity Exchange (MACE). The north Asian nation hopes to boost profit trading in the wool used in some of the world’s priciest luxury fashions by opening up a new online platform for global buying via China’s Bohai Commodity Exchange (BOCE)  .

The trading platform began trading in mid-April. Until then, traders or their representatives have had to be physically present to buy cashmere from the Mongolian Commodities Exchange, the country’s only permitted cashmere trader.