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Make sure you sort and skirt your fleeces before they reach us.
We charge on received weight, and if we have to take out coarse fibre, second cuts, sticks and stones and alpaca toenails (risking damage to our machines), you will be charged for their weight. Fleeces full of debris ncessitate stopping our "de-hairer" at intervals to clear it, so the whole process takes longer, and costs us more.
Many breeders and BAS Regional Groups host courses on assessing and sorting fleeces, and checking for tender (brittle) fleece.
Charges for Fibre Processing
Your Alpaca fleeces will be weighed by us on receipt and a data sheet set up, which accompanies the fleece throughout the processes, recording weight loss as it travels through the machinery.
Processing Alpaca to Coned hand knitting Yarn, 4-Ply weight, Double Knit or Aran weight, is charged at £37.00 per kg received weight, and £41.00/kg to balls or skeins.
Spinning finer Yarns takes more time through the machines and therefore costs more, typically £47.00/kg to cone, £51.00/kg to ball/skein. These would be yarns suitable for Standard Gauge knitting machines (which we would wax for you), for fine hand knitting, or for weaving. Our weaving specialist, Barbara, can advise you on how weaving yarn should be spun - for Warp or Weft - or can discuss it with your weaver.
Processing to carded Rovings for hand spinners or Batts for felting (or stuffing) is charged at £22.00/kg received weight.
Sheep and goat fleeces are charged based on their weight after scouring, due to the weight of lanoline removed in this process.
Colour sorting (e.g. for Jacobs fleeces) is charged for at time spent: typically £10 to £12 per fleece but depenent on size/complexity of the fleece..
In the current economic climate energy, material and wage costs can vary substantially during the year, and we reserve the right to amend these charges at the point of accepting your fleece. All committed charges will be honoured.
All charges quoted will have VAT added to them at the prevailing rate.