On Monday, a manufacturing plant that turns hemp into a sustainable lumber alternative opened up near Murray in Calloway County, Kentucky. The business is the first of its kind in Kentucky and in the nation. Greg Wilson, the CEO and founder of HempWood's parent company, Fibonacci LLC, touts the new product as eco-friendly because it causes no deforestation. And, he says, the product is 20 percent stronger than oak and can be used the same way oak wood is used, David Snow reports for The Paducah Sun.
Wilson says he got the idea from working for a bamboo flooring company years ago, according to the company website. "We're taking the plant fiber - or the stalks from a hemp plant after people have already utilized the top of the plant - and then, we are converting that using a bio-based adhesive into a wood composite," Wilson told Snow. "We're taking something that grows in six months and we're able to replicate or outperform a tropical hardwood that grows in 200 years."
The plant will use more than $1 million a year in raw materials, all from local farms, and will pay out more than $1 million to workers annually, Wilson said. "Each one of these presses will have 12 people working on it, plus three management positions per shift per press," Wilson told Snow. "Our plan is to eventually move into the building that's being built right next door so we can have two pressing operations going, hopefully turning into two shifts per press, which means having a maximum impact approaching the 50 employee mark." That's welcome news in Murray, where 600 employees of nearby lawn mower engine manufacturer Briggs & Stratton recently found out their plant is closing in the fall of 2020.
Meanwhile, just west of Murray in the Graves County community of Mayfield, CBD manufacturer GenCanna is working on a $40 million processing facility that it says will provide more than 80 jobs. The company already owns a 120,000 square foot facility in Paducah, writes The Lane Report.
from The Rural Blog https://ift.tt/2NCXn7O Hemp wood, CBD manufacturing plants coming to W.Ky. - Entrepreneur Generations
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