Emily Plihal
Local Journalism
Initiative Reporter
The wait is over for Smoky Hemp Decortication Ltd with the arrival of the last two pieces of its operating system, and the board is hopefully to be processing hemp by the end of the month!
Chief executive officer Avis Gagne says the group found an engineer in Montreal who was working on a prototype that would allow a cleaner product to be made, giving them the option to cut the fiber in different lengths and making it more appealing to businesses that manufacture various products.
“We received the last of our equipment from Quebec that will process the bales,” says Gagne.
“From now until the end of the month we will be installing the equipment on the line and hopefully by the last day of the month we will have run our first bale through.”
Gagne explains the equipment they’ve purchased differs quite greatly from other decortication equipment that’s used at other facilities.
“Virtually any equipment that has existed up to this point is based on the cotton gin, so basically it’s a hammer mill with combs to bring it through,” she says, adding that process doesn’t work great for hemp because it is not cotton.
“Hemp is a different texture, and you have to separate the core of the stalk from the outer layers which are the fibre. What we have is brand new technology that is 100 per cent made in Canada, the technology in our equipment is patent pending so we can’t talk a lot about that yet, but we’re getting inquiries from across the world as to what this equipment is like and what it can do.”
The equipment they purchased from an engineer in Quebec, who owns the company Maxxera. Gagne says when the patent is completed, there will be more information on how the machine functions.
“There’s a company in Quebec that is making insulation batts and soundboard out of hemp fibre, and they are currently importing all their raw materials from Europe,” she says.
“There’s nothing in North America that is suitable for this type of application, and they introduced us to Dominique and Maxxera. They (Nature Fibres) were excited there may be an opportunity to buy their clean fibre from Canada.”
Gagne says the major variation between what Smoky Hemp Decortication will be producing and what other companies currently produce, is the old school decortications do not produce clean fibre.
“There’s too much hurd left in it and none of them have the capability of processing fibre per the purchases specifications,” she explains.
“Our equipment will do that. We can customize based on what their application is, adjusting length of the cut, and it will also be less than five per cent herd once decorticated,” she adds.
To put concerns of potential investors and growers, who may question whether there is a market for the product, Gagne says they just received a request for 10 tonnes of herd that the business required immediately. Clearly unable to fill that request now, it shows the demand of the product and the ability to market once completely operational.
“As soon as it’s ready to ship, we will ship it,” Gagne says.
“We have one company who wants to buy everything that we produce.”
As of right now, the assembly line will be completed before the end of the month. Afterwards she says they will be fine-tuning the line over the summer, learning the machine, testing and how to produce different lengths to see what is best for custom orders.
“We hope to be processing in earnest by November,” she explains.
“We currently have about 900 bales to process and we’re thinking it should be enough to get us through until next fall.”
Gagne says they will hold an open house in upcoming months so the public can see the process and understand what happens at the decortication plant.
Gagne says the team built a facility that is capable of housing two separate decortication lines, with the hope that in the future they’ll be able to expand their operation. At this juncture, the facility will be able to process five tonnes of product in an hour and with a second line the production would double, allowing them to market even more final product to interested companies.
“This is a 100 per cent Canadian product,” says Gagne. “We (in the region) will grow it, process it, and sell it to a consumer to make into various items.”
