Source: bizjournals.com
Ecovative Design, which makes mushroom materials, wants to be a part of New York's budding industrial hemp industry.
The state is starting a pilot program to test production of industrial hemp at Cornell University, SUNY Environmental Science and Forestry and other schools.
Legislators are in the final stages of authorizing how much can be grown and who can grow it. Once approved, institutions will be able to apply for test plots and could start growing by spring of 2016.
The industrial hemp industry could mean big business for New York companies.
Katie Malysa is material supply manager at Ecovative Design in Green Island. Part of Malysa's job is to find and source new materials for Ecovative to use in its packaging products. She said hemp could be used in everything from food and automotive parts to Ecovative's own mushroom packaging materials.
Ecovative uses corn stalks and leaves to grow eco-friendly alternatives to foam, plastic and engineered-wood products. A mushroom material called mycelium is used as glue to hold the stalks and leaves together in a mold. The molds range from packaging used to protect Dell laptops to the backs of office chairs.
Malysa said Ecovative wants to be part of the research process to help develop material processing and finished product markets that will use New York-grown industrial hemp.
"I'm always interested in products that can be grown closer to home," Malysa said. "This is a great opportunity for us to engage in the local community. It's a great crop because its an alternative agricultural material and can create a processing business to translate that hemp into our own products."
It is currently illegal to grow industrial hemp in the United States because of its association with marijuana, despite having different properties. Industrial hemp's THC content is less than 0.3 percent. The hemp comes from the stalk and the seed of the cannabis plant.
From January 2014 to January 2015, Malysa said that $77 million worth of hemp products have been imported through New York.
"That's a significant market," Malysa said. "A lot of it comes from Europe for fiber and the seeds come from Canada, it's a pretty big industry in Canada."
Malysa said localizing that supply chain has benefits including minimizing the risk for importing, dealing with shorter times and keeping money local.
"The product has to be grown as a crop and processed, so those components can be separated as well as the third part, which is the product market," Malysa said. "A place like Ecovative would make it into a material and sell our products."
Other local industries that could take advantage of it include farmers and the Saratoga Springs thoroughbred race track. Industrial hemp is used in horse bedding and can be used in bedding for chickens and other livestock.
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