WE’VE all heard of the shaggy dog story, but how about the shaggy alpaca story?

A pair of Dorset businessmen are hoping their tale will become a local legend, after setting up an alpaca wool processing plant in Wareham.

Phil Allen and Pete Rossiter joined forces to set up Two Rivers Mill in Brook Road after receiving a £16,000 grant from the Rural Development Programme for England, with help from Business Link.

The money was match funded by the business and paid for the fibre processing machinery, the first year’s rent and for consultation costs, which allowed the pair to seek advice and assistance from one of the UK’s top fibre technicians.

“Pete has got a small herd of alpacas,” explained Phil.

“Just through meeting people and getting involved with other owners he heard of a set of machinery which had been bought about ten years ago with the aim of spinning alpaca fleece and it was idle. We managed to source it from Bradford and we brought it back here and started it up and running.”

The pair now have a selection of different machinery – dated between 1910 and 1983 – to comb and spin the fleeces.

“There’s a lot of value in the animals, but not much value in the fleece until it’s processed,” said Phil.

“There’s a gap in the market for that.

“Lots of people have only got a small herd and owners tend to either breed really high quality animals for sale or they start using some of the fleeces.

“A lot of the bigger yards process it all the way through to their garments, but they can’t do that until it’s processed, but there’s not many places to do that.”

One of the problems is that many processing plants require large minimum quotas of fibre, but Phil and Pete are only asking for a minimum order quantity of 10 kilos, the fleece from approximately five animals, making it more appealing for the owners of smaller herds.

“It helps them to get a bit from their animals,” said Phil.

“You can sell the yarn for quite a premium. It’s between £5 and £10 a kilo, but processed it’s worth a lot more than that.”

Phil and Pete are aiming to process a tonne of fleece a year to begin with, moving up to two or even three tonnes a year eventually.

The pair are also hoping to be able to process fleeces from the Suri breed, a longer wool, which not many other plants in the country currently offer.

Phil continues to work as a structural engineer until the business is fully up and running, which he hopes will be in August.

But he said there had already been substantial interest in the plant from both the UK and from Brittany in Northern France, where there are many owners of alpaca herds.