Industrial hemp requires water and some nutrients but no pesticides. It is planted in May and harvested in August. And while most crops are grown for food or fuels (single or dual purpose), hemp can concurrently produce food and myriad other products. 

The journey begins in spring with our farming partners putting seeds in the ground. Three to four months later that seed germinates and grows an impressive three metres in height, in dense rows with approximately 100,000 plants per acre.

The next stage is the harvest of this raw material. For every 1 ton of hemp we harvest, 1.6 tonnes of CO2 has been sequestered for it to have reached the size it does. Uniquely, the roots of the hemp plant go deeper than that of most other crops, creating a powerful vacuum within the stalk to pull in nutrients and carbon from the soil and atmosphere to form the necessary building blocks to justify its growth cycle.

Once the material reaches the facility, the seeds from the top of the plant will be pressed to release their oils for refinement into biofuels, while the remainder of the seed hull is milled and processed to isolate the proteins and optimise them for the food markets, both human and animal.

The stalk (which is harvested after the seeds) can be fed into a decorticator which separates it into different constituents from the outer bast fibre to the inner woody core, also known as the shiv or hurd. The bast fibre can be used for a non-woven insulation bat while the hurd will be mixed with lime and other aggregates to form a carbon negative alternative to concrete that can be deployed into building structures.