Examples of Hemp Enterprises

Hemp stalk and seed processing

Website: https://lachanvriere.com/en

La Chanvriere (former La Chanvriere de l‘Aube) is the oldest company for hemp processing operating in France but also in whole Europe located near the Troyes town south-east from Paris. It was founded in 1973 as a cooperative by 90 local farmers that joined forces to install a stalk processing line and keep the hemp production in the region alive.

Hemp production, processing and marketing are still core elements for the economic balance of the cooperative. It covers up to 50% of the hemp production in France and 30% in Europe corresponding to 13 000 ha of industrial hemp cultivated and processed per year, corresponding to 80 000 tons of processed hemp straw.

More than 700 farmers, members of the cooperative, are bound by five-year agreements for producing straw, with payment linked to quality: an exception in Europe that ensures the raw material for the processing plant and guarantees a regular supply of finished or semi-finished products to their customers. Farmers sell the raw materials, stalk and seeds to the processing plant that is operated in accordance with their customers’ specifications. Cultivation of hemp is based on biodiversity and ecosystem production principles, using no pesticides and irrigation.

Next to the farmers, La Chanvriere is operated by 60 employees. It valorises hemp shives, fibre, dust as well as seeds. Focus for upcoming years is to further develop textile & building segments of their production.

Sustainability principles of the company are established in its Corporate Social and Environmental Responsibility policy based on ESG (Environmental, Social, Governance) principles.

Wild grown hemp, bamboo and other plants processing and products manufacture, stores operation

Website: https://shahhempinnoventures.com/

SHIV is a Kathmandu-based social enterprise whose main focus is to collect wild hemp, bamboo and other natural resources and transform them into local sustainable products such as hempcrete, hemp bags, paper, oil, soaps, bamboo furniture, bamboo mats and more. SHIV is B-Corp certified and designs its business to be a catalyst for fair employment, economic growth, climate change mitigation, promoting eco-friendly construction and sustainable hemp products.

Next to “turning weed into everything” SHIV also cultivates relationships with local communities to ensure a positive impact and above-standard working conditions for its employees.

This localised „zero-waste“ hemp processing company adopts, as a part of the B-Corp certification standard, several policies, starting with Workers’ impact, followed by Environmental Policy, Customer Service Policy, Supplier Code of Conduct and Stakeholder Engagement. They continuously map and evaluate companies’ impact and adopt the policy accordingly.

In the environmental pillar they follow objectives to “… sustain the health and biodiversity of our environment for our descendants and regenerate the land by conscious sourcing and manufacturing practices.” Next to being legal compliant SHIV seeks to go beyond and become organic certified and provide healthy food for their employees from its gardens, decrease carbon emissions from transport and other operations, saving energy and using solar resources as well as offsetting inevitable emissions. Offices and workshops are built with natural materials (hemp, lime and clay) serving as examples of carbon sequestration options, over 60 000 litres of rainwater can be collected for industrial uses. All the waste is collected, separated, composted, upcycled or sent for recycling. All products are packed in compostable, recycled or recyclable packaging materials.

From a social point of view SHIV cooperates with local villagers mainly from 5 km surroundings in the region with high work migration rate. Like that SHIV provides an extra source of income to villagers, supporting their families and all communities, working on the increase of literacy and other skills adoption. Main principles adopted are:

●       Access to healthcare provided by the company

●       Access to community gardens and shared food programs

●       Upskilling and training for employees

●       Support to employees to start their own small businesses

Hempcrete products manufacturing

Website: https://tecnocanapa-bioedilizia.it/senini/?lang=en

In 2011 Paolo Ronchetti started a garage-based startup company called Equilibrium following his previous university research focused on answering the question “what are the barriers to the mainstreaming of hemp and lime in the building sector?”. In 2018 Equilibrium became part of Senini Srl, a large industrial manufacturer of cement-based products which recognised a potential opportunity for development in hemp building. Senini launched Tecnocanapa hemp building range of products and Paolo became a director general of the branch.

The main idea of the business is to bring hemp and lime biocomposite materials to the mainstream building market in Italy, Europe and globally. Business model consisted in developing industrial ways of manufacturing and applying such materials, for example: industrial production of hempcrete blocks and development of machines for spray applying hempcrete.

Even though Tecnocanapa represents one of the biggest hemp building manufacturers in Europe with 10 employees, 5000 m3 of hempcrete mixtures sold, 3 million euros annual turnover and markets in big part of Europe as well as in Israel, USA, Australia and Japan, it still represents only about 5% of the overall Senini turnover.

After more than 10 years of operation the market has developed and Tecnocanapa has moved from small size jobs and retrofitting projects to new single-family houses and multi apartments development projects.

The company's strategy reflects this shift. It focuses on the improvement of efficiency in the production of hemp blocks and in the reduction of costs in order to be as competitive as possible in the larger industrial building sector.

From the beginning the placement of the company is seen to be a ‘future proof’ business model. The enterprise design and leadership were inspired by the Framework for Strategic Sustainable Development from a Swedish based non-profit organisation called The Natural Step, building on extensive stakeholder engagement.

From an environmental point of view the company uses decarbonisation features of hempcrete. In 2022 it obtained an Environmental Product Declaration (EDP) that allows a quantification of CO2 credits (negative CO2 emissions) created by manufacturing and supplying hemp building materials. The indicator is based on Life Cycle Analysis (LCA) methodology and allows the company to attract bigger customers and scientifically prove its contribution to the green economy transition.

Vertically integrated hemp company

Website: https://kombinatkonopny.pl/

Kombinat Konopny is a vertically integrated hemp company from the Northern part of Poland, operating in herbal and fibre processing starting in 2019.

Its herbal division aims to provide the most natural products that contain all cannabinoids found in the plant. To reach that they soak cannabinoid-rich hemp flowers in oil and squeeze them mechanically.

The fibre division of the company is responsible for cultivation, harvest, decortication, cottonisation and spinning of hemp into yarn, all done in one location. The yarn is then processed in cooperation with local partners to woven fabrics and knitted goods.

Kombinat Konopny currently employs 20+ people and has a turnover of 1+ million EUR, operating mostly on the Polish market for herbal products and opening up for European and US customers for textile products. The cultivation area covers 40 hectares of fibre hemp that can be processed internally into 10 000 metres of fabric per month.

Focus on the textile industry is not accidental. Maciej Kowalski, founder and main face of the company says: “We have to keep in mind that the textile industry is considered one of the worst polluters. Establishing a local, low-mileage supply chain for natural, biodegradable textiles that are manufactured with high regard towards environmental standards, employees' welfare and end consumer health & safety is one of the fundamental aims of our company.”

Hemp food purchaser and wholesaler of hemp food products

Website: https://www.hempro.com/en/homepage/

Hempro Int. is one of Europe's first and largest hemp food companies that produces raw material (seeds, hulled nuts, oil, protein) for the food and feed market, offers branded hemp foods under the HANF FARM label as well as branded products of accessories, clothing and cosmetics.

It was founded in Germany in 2001 by Daniel Kruse, current president of European Industrial Hemp Association, EIHA. Daniel was fascinated by the opportunities hemp can deliver in so many different ways. His vision was and still is to create a successful combination of ecology and economy.

Today the company employs 10 people and supplies customers in most European countries. Average annual turnover reaches over 3,2 Mil. EUR. HEMPRO is a part of the group with Hanf Farm GmbH that is the main provider of raw materials for the manufacture and its sister company Hemp Factory that processes raw-materials into products (hulled hemp seeds, hemp oil, hemp protein powder). With the end consumer brand “HANF FARM” the products are sold into the B2B and B2C market online and offline. The textile brand “The Hemp Line” as well as the bags brand “PURE” and cosmetics under “Phytalize” are produced at a specialised contract manufacturer.

Thus, HEMPRO, Hanf Farm together with Hemp Factory and MH medical hemp working with high quality CBD products represents the whole hemp supply chain.

The company's focus nowadays is on the versatility of offering and quality, reliability and fairness to customers. It aims to establish long-term relationships with customers based on fairness and partnership, and bring innovative and economically viable solutions to them.

Looking at environmental performance, HEMPRO purchases 100 % renewable “Naturstrom” electricity; production of the Hemp Factory is supplied by its own solar installation.

Moulded pulp paper-based packaging

Website: https://www.papacks.com/en/

PAPACKS business model is rooted in the production of sustainable packaging solutions, based on hemp-derived cellulose as a raw material and moulded fibre production technology. That means that hemp fibre cellulose pulp is brought into a 3D form and offered to customers as a direct alternative to plastic packaging.

The company was launched in 2012 and the crucial question ahead of the founder Michael Marchuk and his partners was what raw material to choose: recycled paper or virgin pulp. They turned to virgin pulp with the aim to serve sophisticated industries such as food, cosmetics, and pharmaceuticals that require virgin cellulose with zero content of recycled material, plus extensive quality, and tracing protocols.

At the beginning, the business was fully dependent on supply of wood cellulose, which is nowadays dominated by Scandinavian suppliers. Luckily, moulded fibre is a versatile technology which can adopt diverse raw materials ranging from NSK, bagasse, up to seaweed cellulose.

In 2020 a progressive effort to substitute wood cellulose with alternative renewables has been initiated and the choice has fallen on industrial hemp. The material has proven itself to be superior to traditionally used materials and has opened new horizons in the industry.

These days, PAPACKS employs over 250 people in 6 countries and supplies customers from electronics, cosmetics, food, pharmaceutical and logistic industries with sustainable packaging solutions in whole Europe, Northern and Southern America, Middle East and Australia. With annual cumulative turnover of 15 mil. Euro PAPACKS consumes 10 000 tons of hemp cellulose branded HempPulp® per year.

As Michael Marchuk states, the business environment has changed extensively over the last 5-7 years. After years of PAPACKS being rather marginal, there is now a huge demand for sustainable solutions, but their delivery is conditional on sophisticated ESG management supported by verifiable data. This requires the implementation of sophisticated management and data collection processes.

Despite these challenges, Michel Marchuk is confident that they are on the right track: “Our company sees renewable materials including hemp as the future of the paper/packaging industry. There can’t be any discussion around this, as the demand largely outperforms the supply. For instance, Procter & Gamble issues around 1,500,000 tonnes of packaging waste into the environment (P&G, 2022). If P&G decides to replace 50% of their packaging with wood-based paper packaging, it would have a major impact on forestry. Luckily, there is no need for this, as we can utilise diverse materials in the production of packaging including hemp.

The major goal and difference-maker of the company is an ability to substitute plastics with a sustainable alternative. Moulded fibre is the perfectly fitting technology which can deliver a corresponding design and performance feature to the client, bringing a comparative advantage in carbon emissions decrease and circular economy implementation. Company sources the raw material locally, so next to hemp, it works with Scandinavian wooden cellulose, Australian eucalyptus, Latin American bagasse or agri-wastes.

The company is registered with the EU Transparency register, GIZ and INTERREG. It welcomes students to learn more about packaging, pulp, waste management and beyond.

Sustainable building, hempcrete, hemplime

Website: https://hempire.tech/

Hempire is a Ukrainian hemp building manufacturing company led by one of industry leaders Sergiy Kovalenko. It specialises in producing binders for hemplime applications, hemp lime plasters as well as, it provides hemp lime insulation and consulting services. Hempire, also, sells exclusive licences for manufacturing and distribution of the hemp lime binder across the world. 

Sergiy founded the company inspired by his participation in the hemp lime construction project in Tasmania in 2012 where he got introduced to hempcrete technology. Nowadays HEMPIRE has 8 employees and operates mainly in Ukraine and the USA. It supplies material for buildings to Ukraine, Europe and USA and uses around 100 tons of hemp hurds annually. The main focus of the company is in promoting hemp Lime plasters mixture that applies very well to the renovation of old and damaged houses. At the same time HEMPIRE runs a fundraising campaign to set up a hemplime block manufacturing  facility in Ukraine. They search for international partners in order to increase volumes of their special binder mixture exported to the EU market.After the war in Ukraine is over, HEMPIRE wants to take an active part in rebuilding Ukraine with hemp lime.

Localisation of the production chain is the main issue for Sergiy regarding sustainability. Hemp hurds used come from partner decortication facilities being sourced locally as much as possible. “I believe that companies should be manufacturing their products using the local supply chain. It is quite expensive to transport goods across the borders, so all parts of the recipe should be sourced locally. This principle reduces the cost of the product, reduces delays during logistics and keeps money inside the local economy by purchasing products from the local businesses. Without local hemp, local binder and local workforce there will be no industry since everything would cost a fortune.” says Sergiy Kovalenko.

Next to the local aspect, another condition is a natural origin of all ingredients used.

For those interested in reconstruction of Ukraine HEMPIRE would be happy to host different events directed towards this aim. “We will need all the help in the world from people that are willing to help and learn how to work with hemp-based materials.” closes Sergiy.