By Dominik Lobkowicz
Alpaca farmers in Waldoboro have opened a new mill in town and are looking to lead by example on how to make a herd economically viable.
Bob Weintraub holds some of the sheep wool Maine Top Mill processes as part of its business model. (D. Lobkowicz photo) |
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Bob Weintraub and his daughter Erin started Cloud Hollow Farm in Waldoboro in 2006. After a lot of research, Weintraub said they looked into selectively breeding their alpacas to move them toward producing fiber in the style of vicuñas, another South American camelid prized for its fiber, as a way to seek some return on their investment.
Vicuña products carry a pretty high price tag: Loro Piana, an Italian vicuña purveyor, sells their vicuña gloves for $1,350. Their coats can cost up to around $45,000; a simple vicuña blanket costs just under $12,000.
Vicuñas produce significantly less fiber than alpacas, according to Weintraub: a vicuña produces around 1 pound of fiber every two years compared to 3 to 6 pounds annually for an alpaca.
Weintraub is betting that the longer length and fineness of the vicuña-style alpaca fibers will compete with cashmere as a luxury material, but the plan ran into a snag with finding someone to process the finer fibers.
As a result, Weintraub, Erin, and his other daughter, Kira, leased the former Moon’s Camper Sales building across from Ralph’s Homes on Route 1 in Waldoboro, and purchased several used textile processing machines to do the processing themselves.
After the machines started to arrive in May 2012, a textile engineer spent almost five months setting them up to the Weintraubs’ specifications and training them on how to operate the equipment.
Now, with the Maine Top Mill up and running, Weintraub is hoping to bring a little more uniformity to the alpaca industry and to help other farmers keep their herds sustainable.
“They are wonderful animals, but the industry just doesn’t understand what they’re all about. They have a picture that they’re cute, cuddly, and show-winnings is what values an animal,” Weintraub said.
According to Weintraub, the primary end product for alpaca fleece is currently sock making, and high-end luxury goods require more uniform fibers than most alpacas produce. Dissimilar fibers included in the material are what makes fleece or wool itch, he said.
Weintraub gave an example of a championship alpaca fleece he and others were able to break out into six different grades of fiber.
“Six grades is bad. If people are making decisions to breed based on championships and not breed based on true fiber information, it’s a problem,” he said.
Comparatively, one of the values of sheep wool is its uniformity, Weintraub said, which means the mill knows what it is getting for wool when someone says they have wool from a certain breed of sheep.
“We believe [the value of] an alpaca is based on the fiber it can produce and the genetics of what it can actually do in improving the next generation. We’re just not seeing that type of concentration in the industry,” he said.
“We really want to be helpful, we don’t want to tell anybody what to do,” Weintraub said. He hopes the farm and mill can lead by example and convince others to help develop the infrastructure to take the fleece from farm to yarn.
“Hopefully with the alpaca community we can open their eyes that there is a future,” he said. “There is a way of making their herds sustainable, but we have to – as North Americans or as alpaca breeders worldwide – we have to concentrate on breeding correctly.”
“We reached an understanding of what our animals were, and we found we had to do something to make them sustainable, because that’s the whole purpose of why we do everything that we do,” Weintraub said.
Finer fibers are more desirable, ones that “feel like you’re not wearing anything but you’re just so warm and toasty and happy,” Weintraub said.
“We don’t want to just be spending money and having tax write-offs. We want to be able to at least cover our expenses,” he said.
As part of that, Maine Top Mill also processes fine wools to help pay the bills – as long as it meets common industry standards.
The mill is set up to make “worsted top,” a long bundle of fleece or wool fibers (called “sliver”) combed to nearly parallel and processed to a certain density.
The goal is to make different sizes of worsted top for hand-spinners, spinning mills, and commercial textile mills, Weintraub said.
“Each of those mills, or each of those users, has a size they like to work with,” he said.
The alpaca top produced by the mill, called Chiri Cloud 80’s, is being sold at $26 per ounce at PortFiber in Portland to test the market, Weintraub said. “Somebody is going to hopefully pay cashmere prices for something that feels better than cashmere.”
Comparatively, cashmere top sells from $24 to $30 per ounce, he said.
Maine Top Mill and PortFiber will debut Chiri Cloud 80’s at the 14th Annual Maine Fiber Frolic at the Windsor Fairgrounds on Saturday, June 7 and Sunday, June 8 from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m.
For more information on Maine Top Mill, visit http://www. mainetopmill.com or call 208-258- 8150. For more information on Cloud Hollow Farm, visit http:// www.chf1752.com or call the same number.
