In September, HempRise, a subsidiary of plant-based ingredient supplier Layn Natural Ingredients (Newport Beach, CA), hosted U.S. Representative Trey Hollingsworth (R-IN) to visit its soon-to-be-opened hemp processing plant in Jeffersonville. , IN. Scheduled to open later this year, the 100,000-square-foot production facility required an $ 80 million investment from HempRise and, according to the company, will be the world’s largest hemp processing facility by the end of the day. in the USA. tradeshow, Nutritional outlook interviewed Kyle Einhorn, vice president of sales at HempRise, on why the company felt the time was right to make this significant investment and its plans as the U.S. dietary supplement and food industries wait whether hemp cannabidiol (CBD) be made a legal dietary ingredient in US foods and supplements.

It should be noted that the new facility was designed to meet the hemp processing needs of large multinational companies. Many predict that the number of mass-market companies still waiting to enter the CBD market until CBD is legalized in American foods and supplements will give the green light, and quickly, to the CBD trade. CBD once the ingredient is legal.

That’s the expectation of HempRise, Einhorn said. “The HempRise facility has been specially designed to accommodate large, leading multinational companies,” he said. “The installation was designed to supply Nabiscos, Kellogg’s, Coca-Colas, PepsiCos, Bimbo Bakeries, major key accounts.

The facility aims to provide these businesses with a constant supply of hemp. “One of the missing components in the market right now is a really consistent source of supply and consistent quality,” Einhorn said. “And so, because of our scale, we’re not just able to have inventory and inventory; if companies need material within 24 or 48 hours, we can ship it and they know it is produced with consistent quality at all times.

The facility was also designed to comply with federal dietary supplement manufacturing requirements. “We operate the facility as if the FDA has approved CBD, which means we operate the facility in accordance with 21 CFR Part 111,” he said. “We also set up a standard testing system where we look at the most stringent tests of states [requirements]. I’ll give you an example: Oregon has the highest standards for pesticides [testing], so we’re going to test Oregon’s standards for pesticides. And so, whatever states have the highest testing standards, we will use them to test our hardware. In this way, our end customers are not limited in the states in which they can sell, and they are confident that our material meets the requirements of all states. He added, “To our knowledge, no one else does this. “

The facility was “specially designed” to specialize in mining, Einhorn explained. The facility also has a spray dryer that allows the company to create powdered ingredients, such as the new spray-dried, water-soluble broad spectrum hemp powder the company now offers, called Hemp Aqua, as well as a nanoemulsion specifically for beverages and personal care products. The goal of these new formats is “to really help our customers keep their products separate on the shelves,” he said, helping them improve bioavailability, mixability and taste profile.

The beauty of the extraction facility is that it can be used to produce other ingredients if the CBD foods and supplements take a long time to become legal or if the CBD is not legalized in these products at all.

“We use it for extracting hemp to make CBD, but the facility is capable of other extractions as well,” Einhorn said. “If by any chance the hemp market isn’t going in a positive direction, we can extract stevia, we can extract tea, because we are owned by Layn, and Layn has been in the botanical extract business for 25 years. The factory was built so that we could alternate the extractions if necessary.

Right now, he said, “the plant’s primary goal is to process between 8 million and 10 million pounds of hemp per year,” including CBD isolates and hemp extracts. broad spectrum. The plant’s location in Jeffersonville, IN, means the company will source much of its biomass from within the state as well as from surrounding areas such as Tennessee and Kentucky, and even from the Wisconsin and Colorado while trying to keep its carbon footprint low.

Getting the regulatory green light for CBD for foods and supplements, for example through the passage of a bill like HR 841, “will really help to change the way this industry operates and the potential for d ‘other companies to consider CBD as an ingredient,’ said Einhorn. “Most large multinational companies do not review CBD in all areas or in any product because it is not approved by the federal government. And so, therefore, it limits some of that growth. “

But HempRise is now ready if that growth were to happen, he said. “Because the facility is so large, we are able to expand quickly enough to meet the demands of large, prominent companies, and we look forward to supplying other people to the market until a such legislation be adopted, ”he concluded.

Nutritional outlook also asked Einhorn about the state of supply, or oversupply, in the current hemp market. “The supply, from our point of view, of raw material, [is that] biomass is always readily available, ”he said. “It’ll be interesting to see. Right now we’re harvesting, so it’ll be interesting to see, once those numbers come out, what kind of effect the drought and heat in Oregon has had… Now for us, we still have access or have been approached for access to 2019, 2020, biomass There is still a lot of material from this point of view.

“The market supply is definitely a little over the top at the moment,” he continued. “This is where you always see a drop in prices. Two years ago, he said, isolates were selling for between $ 4,000 and $ 7,000 per kilogram; now they sell for $ 500 a kilo.

But with increasing demand – Einhorn said he has seen growth especially in CBD sparkling waters and CBD protein and energy bars – “We believe that will change shortly as demand increases. enough.”

Regarding cannabinoids other than CBD, Einhorn said that for now, the primary focus of the HempRise facility will be “the CBD side of the business”. However, he said, as the company considers Phase II of its growth plan over the next 18-24 months, it could expand to ingredients like hemp fiber and other cannabinoids from hemp miners like CBA, CBG and CBN, as interest to these consumers grows.

“It’s really an emerging market,” he said. “The industry has been around for seven years. Some people say HempRise is a little late, but we think we’re coming at the right time as the industry is still transforming into what it will be when it grows up – and we are confident that we can be one. key value-added supplier for level one, two and three companies.