Kenneth Delcour and John Taylor met at a poker table and now, after a $1.2mm investment, are growing 240K hemp plants in Kentucky. Taylor, who serves as COO, explained in a video that Commonwealth Extracts will plant almost 200 acres this year. The industrial hemp will be used to produce CBD. Unlike imported CBD, which by law is mandated to be derived from seeds and stalk, where there is little CBD, Commonwealth Extracts will use the CBD-rich trichomes. The company reports that a customer who is buying $75K per month was previously relying upon imported CBD.
Commonwealth Extracts will be building a $9mm manufacturing facility. The Kentucky hemp industry is filling a void left by the decline in tobacco production. Taylor said that it’s a very natural substitution despite the limitation that tobacco fields can’t be used immediately due to prior pesticide use, though the rest of the infrastructure is in place. The Kentucky Department of Agriculture anticipates that farmers will grow 4,500 acres of hemp this year, up from 900 in 2015 and just 33 in 2014.
Read Grace Schneider’s “Louisville co. fueled by buzz over hemp oil”: http://www.courier-journal.com/story/news/local/2016/06/04/louisville-co-fueled-buzz-over-hemp-oil/84190718/
