Calgary hemp processors, Hutterites trail blaze with 'potent' CBD
When Andrew Potter’s Calgary-based cannabis processing outfit wanted to go where none had before, Hutterite help seemed a natural fit.
“We needed growers who are low-cost and have big kind of (production) positions,” said Blue Sky Hemp Venture’s CEO Potter.
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“Hutterite colonies ticked all the boxes in being sustainable and low-cost.”
That’s led to five Saskatchewan colonies this year harvesting most of Blue Sky’s total of 970 hectares of hemp — a cousin of the marijuana plant that contains almost none of its buzz-inducing THC content.
“They’re the main growers and are shareholders and have really bought into all the neat things you can do with hemp,” said Potter, adding other colonies have expressed interest.
The company, he said, also has growing sites in the Edmonton and Lethbridge areas.
Since they dived into the hemp business three years ago, the company’s been toiling on the food side, its crop being spun into products, protein powders and oils.
But with a processing licence from Health Canada in their back pocket, Blue Sky’s branched out into culling CBD — or cannabidiol — from the flowers of the plant, a process performed at its extraction facility in Saskatoon.
Blue Sky Hemp is now able to extract CBD oil from its hemp at a facility in Saskatoon. PHOTO BY SUBMITTED /Postmedia Network
The scope of its operation and its exhaustive use of the plant sets it apart in Canada, said Potter.
“What makes us unique is the focus on the whole plant — we’re leaving nothing to waste,” he said.
This year’s harvest should yield at least 4,000 kilograms of crude CBD oil, “worth a lot more than that other crude oil,” said Potter.
That other oil industry’s financing side is one Potter spent two decades plying before industrial hemp’s potential, one that had fascinated him two decades ago, “popped back into my head,” he said.
Opportunities presented by CBD’s medical applications are driving the company’s efforts.
According to the Harvard Medical School, CBD has proven effective in treating severe childhood epilepsy, most notably by reducing the frequency of seizures or preventing them.
It’s also shown promise in mitigating sleep disorders and anxiety and in treating chronic pain, it says, though further research on those areas is needed.
Blue Sky says its extraction process can increase CBD’s potency by a factor of five, with enough capacity to handle a crop more than tenfold the size of this year’s yield, or 550,000 bushels a year.
Bushels of harvested hemp. PHOTO BY SUBMITTED /Postmedia
According to Health Canada, 12,000 hectares of industrial hemp were planted in Alberta in 2018 — 38.5 per cent of Canada’s crop.
That year, Canada exported nearly 5,400 tonnes of hemp seed, most of that to the U.S.
Potter said Blue Sky’s next step is to process the hemp plant’s stalks to process fibre that can be used for fabrics, consumer goods and building materials.
“The final piece of the puzzle is the fibre processing, it’ll get us to that full plant utilization,” he said.
Though CBD prices have fallen dramatically over the past 18 months due to supply glut, processors like Blue Sky should still do well, said Calgary-based cannabis industry analyst Het Shah, who’s been pushing for both the recreational drug and hemp to be traded on major stock exchanges.
“They’re commodities and there are very lucrative opportunities,” said Shah.
The fact that hemp is easier to grow than cotton and offers good soil regeneration also makes the crop attractive, he said.
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