A tectonic shift is taking place as previously underground drugs are thrust into the mainstream. As I’ve covered alcohol, tobacco and cannabis for Bloomberg News, a common theme has emerged: Mental-health care is ripe for disruption, and yesterday’s party drugs are tomorrow’s cures.
With the Dose, you’ll get a weekly chronicle of the biggest news about the companies and personalities that are shaping this change.
Pot Porsches and Hempcrete are here From stalled legislation to falling stock prices, cannabis didn’t have the greatest year. But investors are finding something to be optimistic about heading into 2022: industrial hemp. Demand is poised to rise for hemp — the staid sister to the mood-altering forms of cannabis — as it’s increasingly adopted for a wide range of uses, including concrete blocks, clothing and even car parts. The shift is driven by environmental incentives such as carbon caps and single-use plastic bans, which are making some natural materials preferable to those made from petrochemicals.
“Industrial hemp is the biggest opportunity in the cannabis sector as a whole,” said Mina Mishrikey, a partner at Merida Capital Partners. His firm has invested around 90% to 95% of its $500 million in assets under management in cannabis businesses centered around THC, the psychoactive ingredient in marijuana, but aims to make more investments in industrial hemp, Mishrikey told me.
Hemp could use the boost after the market struggled to capitalize on the hype following the 2018 farm bill, which legalized hemp and led to over-planting when not enough companies were ready to create end products. In 2021, the number of acres of hemp planted fell to 33,844 from 70,530 a year earlier and 465,787 in 2019 according to New Frontier Data.
Adding to the challenges, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration recently refused to regulate one of hemp’s best-known products — CBD, or cannabidiol — as a dietary ingredient, casting a specter of uncertainty over the otherwise booming market for creams, tinctures and gummies.
As a material, hemp remains more expensive than alternatives that come from petrochemicals. But India, Canada, Germany and South Africa are among the countries cracking down on plastics in 2022, making alternatives more economical. Meanwhile, pressure to shift from oil and gas to renewable industries is increasing and carbon credits are becoming more valuable — and that’s an area where hemp has an advantage.
Mishrikey sees the plant’s ability to capture carbon while it’s growing, and its ability to use less water than cotton, as key factors that help it disrupt a range of products. Just one category of industrial hemp alone — precast concrete — is worth around $20 billion, roughly the same size as the current U.S. legal marijuana market, he pointed out.
His fund’s investments include Canadian Rockies Hemp Corp., based in Bruderheim, Alberta, which processes hemp for use in textiles, pulp and paper, animal bedding, rope, composites and automobile components, according to its website. Another is Bast Fibre Technologies Inc., based in Victoria, British Columbia, which has a processing technology to make nonwoven fabrics with natural fibers including hemp. That could be helpful for the booming market in wipes, which are ripe for disruption due to the sewer-clogging gobs known as fatbergs.
Hemp could play a role in many categories: plastics, textiles, papers, building materials, protein for humans and animals, and concrete of all forms. Some of the more innovative applications include hempcrete, where hemp fibers are infused in the mortar, and a Porsche car with some components made of hemp. Some see hemp as a viable alternative to almost anything made from petrochemicals, due to the properties of its cellulose fibers.
The U.S. will have some catching up to do: China is the leading grower of hemp and is tiptoeing into the CBD market, starting with Hong Kong. The plants also require different agricultural and processing techniques compared to other forms of cannabis, meaning the supply chain will have to be built out from scratch. Processing the plant’s tough fibers, called decortication, is an arduous practice that takes heavy machinery and has created something of a bottleneck.
That bottleneck is about to get some help from a $500 million impact fund by rePlant Hemp Advisors, launched in early November by Geoff Whaling, co-founder of Collective Growth Corp., and others including Michael Woods, former chief executive officer and chief operating officer of Rothschild & Co. Asset Management U.S. The fund plans to help develop U.S. infrastructure to process hemp and improve the supply chain, focusing on hemp for food and fiber. “I probably have a dozen companies call me a week” about using hemp in their products, Whaling said, citing brands like Chobani, Wrangler jeans and Tesla.
“They all want to know where they can get 100 tons of fiber a year, and the answer, at this point, is nowhere,” he said. “No major manufacturer will sign unless there’s a two-year supply in a warehouse.” But slowly, that’s changing.
“We’re seeing more countries advancing and mandating use of sustainable fibers, more auto companies adopting natural fiber solutions,” Whaling said. “It really is an industrial hemp revolution.”
Number of the week 16.6% The compound annual growth rate of the legal U.S. cannabis market from 2020 to 2025, as estimated by New Frontier Data in their 2021 Year in Review report.
Follow the money and you’ll find the deeper mysteries of what’s going on. In this case, we’re following the practically of what needs to happen for us to sustain our self. It’s apparent our environment, our economics and our Industrial evolution, is in dire straights. Hemp Is leading the way to a New Industrial Revolution
Money seekers are hot on this ‘new trail’ of Industrial Hemp and beginning to ask, what about the rest of the Hemp Plant. Beyond CBD there’s a multi-Billion Dollar industry slowly pirculating, ready to become full brew. Many of us have know this for years… Including the leaders like Thomas Jefferson ‘Hemp is the necessity to the wealth and protection of this country!’
Hemp: The Next Step or Pivot for Investors in Future Green Wave Stocks
The continued maturation of the cannabis industry, and subsequent recent sell-off of recreational marijuana stocks is leading companies to reevaluate new opportunities to expand into.
Industrial hemp is a logical choice as it promises blue sky potential in product development that recreational marijuana never could. This assumption is based on both the multiple health benefits associated to CBD content, but also the industrial applications that the entire hemp plant could provide.
The industrial hemp market space is an exciting new area of product development and research. The next few years will bring us new and exciting choices when it comes to the blended clothing we wear, the raw materials that encompass the cars we drive, the paper we write on, the recognized and healthful food we eat, the natural medicinal alternatives we are prescribed and the wellness products we use.
Industrial hemp has thousands of applications, with many more yet to be discovered now that the plant is available to scientists for research.
According to a 1938 article in Popular Mechanics, at that time, there were over 25,000 uses for the hemp plant. With the increase in technology, knowledge, manufacturing, etc., experts now estimate that with whole plant utilization, the hemp plant actually could have around 50,000 uses![1]
Industrial hemp can be used for textiles, car parts, pet supplies, biofuel, food, construction materials, and biodegradable plastic.
We are quite literally on the forefront of discovering what this extraordinary plant can do. The possibilities are just beginning to be known, which means there is unrealized potential for forward thinking investors positioned in the industrial hemp market.
Many of the products that can be produced from hemp are still in the R&D phase. In my opinion, in the next few years, we could see an explosion of hemp-related manufacturing processes and products that will be available to multiple industries and ultimately the end consumer.
Check out this company – Hemp Black
Sign-up now and stay tuned to FNN updates as this story continues to develop!
Editor’s Note – We are not encouraging buying of any stocks – Encouraging you to keep your eyes open on the Hemp Industrial Revolution! If you happen to know of viable Industrial Hemp Stocks, feel free to reach out and share.
With Hemp Fiber being the strongest and most versatile fiber on the planet, it has the power to change our Industrial and Environmental reality. Why we are not moving directly into this industry as a part of our GO GREEN and flourish plan is bewildering. HEMP is the carbon capture technology plan, what are they waiting for?
Why are we not focused on growing hemp around the world and producing a MEGA HEMP FIBER Industry?
When it comes to hemp, hemp fiber is the new emerging industrial solution for the sustainability of our future. Beit industry, economics, environmental stabilization or wellness, Hemp provides the most natural and economic and environmental solutions for the planet. Knowing this, the question is, why are we not growing hemp fiber every where?
After all hemp is a weed, a long stocky weed that grows 8 to 12ft tall in 12 to 14 weeks, in most climates. While growing hemp it pulls CO2 from the atmosphere while emitting oxygen at the same time. Hemp is the one of the strongest fibers on the planet. Hemp fiber can become paper, plastic, clothing, shoes, housing, supercapacitors, horse bedding, biofuel and a myriad of other products. With just a few of these hemp industries we can begin to regain the eco balance of our planet and as importantly, provide a new plan with a naturally flourishing plant ~ economics, trade, and most importantly solutions?
Darlene Mea
Hemp provides a plan of sustainability, economics and environment.
Hemp is the game changer for our world
Why are we ‘not’ planting our farms with hemp fiber in the US? Why are we ‘not’ repurposing warehouses across the US for this epic Hemp industrial revolutionary solution? Why are we not looking to hemp instead of cutting down forest trees which we need for the oxygen they provide. Why are we still producing most products from petrochemical when they are toxic to everything but financial gain. Why should we continue to use up our earth resources when we can grow hemp fiber for paper, plastics, grafite, oil remediation, clothing, construction, and even bridges that take us to a land of sustainability for all!
Below is the latest information regarding the largest landowners in the United States. Perhaps they’re not aware of this looming multi-trillion dollar hemp industry emerging slowly into our world. It seems to be, I’m proposing, there’s a monopoly of farm landowners and the petrochemical industrial complex? What does that mean, we’ll see!
According to the Land Report, which bills itself as the “Magazine of the American Landowner,” Gates has amassed 242,000 in farmland acreage. Gates and his wife Melinda own a total of 268,984 acres of land, most of which includes the farmland, along with 25,750 acres of transitional land and 1,234 acres of recreational land.
Part of that land is in Arkansas. The Gates family owns 47,927 acres in Arkansas, according to the Land Report. This acreage accounts for 17.8 percent of the family’s total land holdings. The report did not specify if the Arkansas land was all farmland.
Arkansas had the second-most land owned by the Gates family, after Louisiana. In the Bayou State, the Gates family reportedly own 69,071 acres of land, making up approximately 25.68 percent of the family’s overall land holdings.
The Land Report article provides an in-depth look at how editors tracked down Gates’ farmland acquisitions.
We’re showing this so you can ponder with us… what’s this all about? Why so much land? Wouldn’t it be incredible if they fueled the hemp industry and began farming hemp? What if other big players decided to repurpose America for hemp product manufacturing?
As the CEO of HempingtonPost I can see a future entirely possible and at the same time I know life, on many levels is a big monopoly game. So maybe it’s the big player’s that do get in this industry and make most of the money, as they do? Yet still, we would have new industry, greater economics for all, and a way forward to a natural sustainable future. The important part is timing – Now is the time!
While there’s been a big push toward going green — why are big companies still focusing on trees for their products?
Why not Hemp? Do you think businesses don’t know about Hemp’s benefits, or don’t know how to step away from the petrochemical industrial complex? Are they really in the dark, or are they simply choosing to avoid Hemp’s multi-billion dollar future, no matter what the cost to our environment? Climate change and the resultant economic fallout is happening now, and we need to move back to the hemp as a resource.
Here’s one good reason: Crops of hemp fiber can be grown in 12 to 14 weeks.
Jack Herer said it perfectly: “Why use up a forest which was centuries in the making and the mines which required ages to lay down if we can get the equivalent of forest and mineral products in the annual growth of the hemp fields?”
Why is it, as we move into 2021, that Hemp is not a major solution for many of the answers we seek? I cannot be the only one who stands in complete awe about why Hemp is not a primary economic movement in our country and throughout the world. Actually, we do know why, and I wonder what “We the People” of this planet are going to do about it. How will we turn things around?
How is it that big companies are doing everything they can to go green but aren’t moving toward Hemp? How is it possible that these major companies don’t know about the power of Hemp? How can we go forward in this country with absolutely no plan for this wonder plant being included as part of our economy and the environment? Why do major companies such as Coca-Cola make a move from plastic bottles to paper bottles — made from wood — when they could have used Hemp plastic instead? What am I missing here?
According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, scientists estimate that eight million metric tons of plastic — the approximate weight of 90 aircraft carriers — find their way into our oceans every year. The Paper Bottle Company (Paboco) wants to help manufacturers and distributors reduce their single-use plastic waste by creating bottles made from degradable plant sugars rather than fossil fuels.
BillerudKorsnäs, a paper packaging developer, first started this initiative in 2013 and has been joined by research companies and industry leaders like Avantium and ALPLA. The project proudly announced in October 2019 that Coca-Cola, L’Oreal, and Absolut had joined their efforts.
The historic brewery, Carlsberg, has been a long-time partner of the Paper Bottle Project and explained in a press release, “We are working on developing the world’s first ‘paper’ beer bottle made from sustainably-sourced wood fibers that is both 100% bio-based and fully recyclable.” Shortly after, the brewing company unveiled its first paper bottle for their Pilsner beer as proof of concept on their social media sites. These paper bottles, made out of a plant-based polymer called “PEF,” are expected to be fully recyclable and naturally degrade within a year, unlike their plastic counterparts. The sustainability company which creates these bottles hopes to have them ready for consumer use by 2023.
Paboco Technical Director Christina Carlsen says, “Being part of this journey from the beginning, inventing the technology and building the first machine for the paper bottle with my bare hands is my chance to make a difference. A difference towards a sustainable world for future generations. What we are doing is not just a new bottle; we are making a difference.”
This push towards eliminating single-use plastics comes off of last year’s momentum to reduce plastic straw use in many countries and corporations around the globe. Similarly, entire countries are trying their hardest to positively contribute to sustainability initiatives like China’s plan to ban plastic bags in all of its major cities by the end of 2020. Through these projects, we can see that the global community is taking responsibility for the growing environmental waste problem and uses innovation and human ingenuity to help ensure we have a clean, healthy Earth for many centuries to come.
Companies like Coca-Cola, Carlsberg, and Absolut support The Paper Bottle Company’s efforts to create sustainable, recyclable bottles.
While I applaud the efforts of these companies, who are making paper bottles to help mitigate the severe plastic pollution problem we face, I need to ask: Is this really their best solution? My big (and ongoing) question is: Why not hemp?
How do we reach these big corporations and educate them on the powers of Hemp? How do we bring Hemp Fiber awareness to industrialist that could use it to turn our failing industries around? Decorticators exist! Farmers and farmland are plentiful and Hemp fiber has zero THC. It can be made into hundreds of products we use daily — from plastic, paper, biofuel, building material, clothing, super-capacitors — and the list goes on. Does this not sound insane? No-one is talking about industrial hemp for our sustainable future.
I may be preaching to the choir here, or just maybe I’m just all alone, but someone, please, let me know how we turn this situation around. Hemp is standing by to save the world, and it needs your help.
We need to bring Hemp awareness to our world in every way we can. Remember – Hemp is not CBD, it’s our economic, industrial and environmental saving grace.
What can you do to help? Who do you know that can make a difference? Who can we highlight here at HempingtonPost.com to ensure that Hemp becomes the game changer we’ve all been waiting for?
Puration, Inc. has released an online multimedia presentation detailing the launch of their new lifestyle branded business initiative targeting the acquisition of hemp consumer advocates as participants in an innovative hemp-solution-development-ecosystem.
PURA is evolving from a CBD beverage company into a hemp lifestyle company. The company views the hemp market as being in its infancy. Little is understood in the market about hemp other than it being a source of CBD. And little is known about all the benefits of CBD.
The U.S. industrial hemp market is expected to reach a valuation of $26.6 billion by 2025. It was valued at $4.6 billion in 2019. We believe the future value of industrial hemp is substantially larger than current analyst projections because the industrial potential of hemp is not pervasively understood.
PURA is introducing a business plan with the objective of raising awareness for the comprehensive potential of industrial hemp by developing multiple products that demonstrate that potential.
Their target market is the hemp consumer advocate that believes in the personal, environmental and economic benefits of hemp. The PURA customer considers their preference for hemp products over conventional alternatives as an expression of their identity – committed to naturally derived personal health products, and environmentally sustainable industrial solutions. Hemp is essential to the lifestyle of the hemp consumer advocate and the hemp consumer advocate is eager to convert others to the benefits of hemp.
PURA is introducing a platform to interact with hemp activist consumers – to hear and act on their ideas regarding hemp derived products from pharmaceuticals to an array of textile and construction solutions. Operationally, PURA is reorganizing its existing business concerns, contracts, and intellectual properties to parallel its reprioritization of efforts in conjunction with the new hemp lifestyle brand.
The lifestyle brand will be built around a hemp-solution-development-ecosystem that facilitates the interactive participation of consumers, engineers, designers, medical professionals, entrepreneurs and investors to conceive, pilot, validate and produce hemp solutions.
The ecosystem will be founded on a physical property where participants can tangibly interact in the process to conceive, pilot, validate and produce hemp solutions. The hemp-solution-development-ecosystem lifestyle business plan is well beyond concept phase. PURA has acquired a 72-acre property form UC Asset LP (OTC: UCASU) as the foundation for the hemp-solution-development-ecosystem. The property, in Farmersville, Texas is the inspiration for the hemp lifestyle brand name, “Farmersville Brands.”
PURA has established a hemp-solution-development-ecosystem partnership with PAO Group, Inc. (OTC PINK: PAOG) to participate in the co-development of hemp derived nutraceutical and pharmaceutical solutions. PURA has also established a hemp-solution-development-ecosystem partnership with Alkame Holdings, Inc. (OTC PINK: ALKM) to act as a dedicated copacker for hemp derived beverages, foods and oils.
More partnerships are in the works. A corporate name change is underway and new website is under construction.
In addition to the recent land purchase and new partnerships, PURA brings a host of historical momentum to the new hemp-solution-development-ecosystem business plan. In January of this year PURA launched an acquisition campaign targeting CBD product acquisitions that could be enhanced with PURA’s patented technology. Those assets will be valuable in propelling the hemp-solution-development-ecosystem business strategy forward.
PURA owns a license to a U.S. Patented cannabis extraction process backed by extensive university medical research. The license, issued by NCM Biotech, is exclusive for beverages, edibles and cosmetics among other uses. NCM Biotech is focused on medical research and Puration has access to that research. See a recent research report on CBD extracts derived from NCM Biotech’s patented extraction process: Journal of Cannabis Research.
In the course of this year, the company has acquired a CBD confections business, a CBD pet products business and CBD sun care business. Combined with its existing beverage industry product line, PURA’s combined horizontal market opportunity ranges across $2 trillion in market value.
PURA’s new hemp-solution-development-ecosystem business will maintain its existing beverage business. PURA’s EVERx CBD Sports Water remains a leader in the sports nutrition market place accounting for the lion’s share of PURA’s $2.7 million in revenue reported last year in 2019.
As we near the conclusion of this presentation for all of you already familiar with PURA, yes, the one for one dividend of PAOG stock coming from the PAOG acquisition of PURA’s hemp cultivation operation is still on track to be issued soon.
PURA management looks forward to revealing additional specific details of the hemp-solution-development-ecosystem. Look for announcements with more details on the existing and developing partnerships and the development of the Farmersville property. Look for the launch of the new website that will include more information on how to become an early PURA participating hemp consumer advocate. The company also plans to soon release more details on the plans to integrate an innovative investment strategy into the overall ecosystem solution.
With companies like Aurora Cannabis (NYSE:ACB), Canopy Growth (NYSE:CGC), and Tilray (NASDAQ:TLRY) catching the attention of investors and consumers alike, it’s no surprise that marijuana legalization is a hot issue in the U.S. According to a report by Grandview Research, the U.S. market for cannabis was worth $11.3 billion in 2018, with an expected growth rate of 14.5% per year through 2025 — but that might be contingent on further loosening of prohibition laws. As of 2018, 21 states have debated legislation that would legalize recreational use of marijuana, and 33 states have already legalized some forms of cannabis for either recreational or medicinal use.
Presently, marijuana is fully legal for recreational use in only 11 of those states. With the exception of Vermont, jurisdictions with legalized recreational cannabis also provision for the commercialization of cannabis products for adults. Fully legalized marijuana remains uncommon in the United States, even if it’s significantly more common than it was 10 years ago.
2020 may see pivotal victories for legalization
In 2020, a handful of states will vote on full or partial legalization via referendum, including Arizona, Mississippi, Montana, Nebraska, New Jersey, and South Dakota. It’s reasonable to suspect that at least a couple of these political efforts will fall short, but legalization proponents shouldn’t despair. Many of the states that eventually legalized recreational cannabis via referendum had to try more than once before succeeding, as is typified by California’s failed ballot initiative in 2010. But cannabis investors will be pleased to learn that no state that decriminalized or legalized recreational use has repealed it, despite several different attempts via ballot measures. Thus, the country looks like it’s on track for legalization to make progress this election cycle, even if there’s still a long way to go.
Even as states move to reform their cannabis laws, federal regulatory bodies like the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) are prohibited by federal law from participating in quality control or consumer safety efforts. This means that as legalization advances, state governments need to build new infrastructure to make sure that their cannabis regulations are locally enforceable, thereby introducing a large amount of overhead to the legalization process. It may also make it harder for international cannabis companies to compete in the U.S. because they’ll need to deal with many different sets of regulations rather than just one.
Medicinal use and decriminalization aren’t the same as legalization
Full nationwide cannabis legalization is still a distant goal, and there are many cases where progress has been incremental rather than transformational. Sixteen states have decriminalized recreational marijuana use without implementing full legalization for recreational purposes. In these states, cannabis products are only sold for medicinal use, which is strictly controlled. In places like Idaho and Indiana, medicinal use is so tightly regulated that medicinal products from jurisdictions like California might not be legal. This is a concern for cannabis investors because it means businesses would need to make different products for these jurisdictions if they wanted to compete.
Similarly, many states haven’t committed to full decriminalization despite allowing for limited medicinal use. In Alabama, non-medical marijuana possession is a misdemeanor for first-time offenders and a felony for subsequent violations, so its “decriminalized” status is a bit of a misnomer. In contrast, Georgia’s laws tightly control the THC content of medicinal marijuana while formally forbidding any recreational use, but cities including Atlanta and Savannah have proceeded to decriminalize it anyway, creating precarious pockets of opportunity that businesses are hesitant to exploit.
Finally, there’s the issue of the federal government’s approach to cannabis policy. Right now, there’s no way to reconcile the fact that at the federal level, recreational cannabis is still fully illegal, even if state governments like New Hampshire’s claim to have nullified the federal prohibition. State-level initiatives aside, Congress was initially scheduled to vote on a legalization bill called the MORE Act this week, but with an upcoming battle over Supreme Court nominees looming, the vote will likely be delayed until after the 2020 election.
So, while it does look like there is nationwide momentum building behind legalization for recreational use, there’s still a long way to go, and there may be difficult legal battles ahead.
Here’s The Marijuana Stock You’ve Been Waiting For
A little-known Canadian company just unlocked what some experts think could be the key to profiting off the coming marijuana boom.
And make no mistake – it is coming.
Cannabis legalization is sweeping over North America – 11 states plus Washington, D.C., have all legalized recreational marijuana over the last few years, and full legalization came to Canada in October 2018.
And one under-the-radar Canadian company is poised to explode from this coming marijuana revolution.
Because a game-changing deal just went down between the Ontario government and this powerhouse company…and you need to hear this story today if you have even considered investing in pot stocks.
