Hemp Sweet Hemp

Somewhere among the fresh, new buildings and streets of the Tauriko business estate, there’s
a vast factory warehouse squashing hemp seeds into a lustrous oil. Forklifts whirr and workers
in high-vis tinker with the cold press that sits right in the middle of the factory floor. 

This is the home of Hemp New Zealand, which receives truckloads of hemp from its South Island growers to create cold-pressed hemp oil, hemp seed cake, hemp hearts, and a slew of body
oils and balms.

Hemp has shot onto the New Zealand wellness scene in recent years — since November 2018 to be exact, when the The Misuse of Drugs (Industrial Hemp) Regulations 2006 and the Food Regulations 2015 were amended and the seeds could be sold as food. The seeds are from industrial hemp — not marijuana — and these little nuggets are packed with nutrients essential to human health.

And you’ll see it everywhere. At the time of writing, Countdown stocks 14 different hemp products from seeds and oil to brownies and burgers. Simon Gault and Jamie Oliver scatter hemp hearts liberally. There are protein powders, oils, hemp milks, butters, energy bars, soaps, body balms,
textiles and even building products. We have a blossoming of producers in Aotearoa, including
Hemp New Zealand right here in Tauranga.‍

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Heart of gold

Inside Hemp New Zealand’s Tauriko factory, hundreds of enormous white canvas bales are stacked around the chilly factory floor, each stuffed with hauls of seed waiting their turn to be lab-checked
for quality and then transformed into foods.

Some will be made into hemp hearts, their soft oily centres kept whole, and sold to consumers
for sprinkling onto salads, breads, cereals or blended into smoothies. For this, they’re dehulled
in an enormous, shaking machine that separates them from their outer shells.

The seeds destined for oil keep their shells and are poured whole from the giant bales into
a hopper in the centre of the factory floor, which channels them down into a screw press.
This German-imported machine squashes the seeds and two things emerge: the greeny-gold oil
and the dry hemp cake.

The oil has a nutty, earthy flavour. It’s not meant for cooking because of its low smoke point, but
is instead marketed like an extra virgin olive oil: for salad dressings, smoothies, hummus, dips and sauces — or taken as a daily spoonful or couple of capsules. Health-wise, it has the perfect ratio
of omega-3 to omega-6 fatty acids which is good for blood pressure, brain, hormones and more.

It’s also high in the rare y-linolenic acid (GLA), which has anti-inflammatory properties, a big
help in warding off many diseases and syndromes. It has vitamins and minerals galore. Hemp
New Zealand is supplying cosmetics companies that are interested in its inflammation-dampening ability and the fact it doesn’t block pores. 

The crisp-looking hemp cake is milled into an ultra-fine powder, which becomes the hemp protein product. It’s at least 50% protein — and it’s complete protein, which means it has high amounts
of the nine amino acids essential for human health. “The nutritional profile for what you get is impressive,” says Hemp New Zealand business manager Claire Edmonds. “It has more protein
than beef and chicken.”

And just to be clear, these hemp seed products have none of the psychoactive THC nor therapeutic CBD (CBD oil is found in the flowers and leaves of industrial hemp — Hemp New Zealand is
not licensed to handle these). The constant lab tests make doubly sure there is no trace of THC
on the seed.

One of the company’s aims is to market the products as everyday pantry items, so Hemp New Zealand’s self-appointed recipe tester Fay McCormick is creating and adapting recipes to educate people on how to use them. She says the protein is great in breads and brownies, or in smoothies with banana or other fruit to balance the flavour — it tastes earthier than the hearts because it contains the shell of the seed. The website has countless recipes by Fay including Vegan Mushroom Hemp Burgers, Hemp Cross Buns, and protein balls that use both hemp hearts and protein powder.

And it’s also another dairy alternative: down in the Hemp New Zealand staff kitchen, a nut milk making machine sits pride of place on the kitchenette counter, delivering glassfuls of creamy
— and relatively mild-tasting — hemp-heart milk to staff and visitors.‍

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Growing challenges

Fragrant stalks of hemp are swaying in open fields around the country: Manawatu, Waikato,
Hawkes Bay, Canterbury and Southland. In 2021 there were 192 farms growing 862 hectares.
Hemp New Zealand’s 35 farmers are all in the Canterbury region. There are around 20 different
types of industrial hemp currently allowed to be grown in New Zealand.

Hemp has caught the attention of growers because it’s sustainable. It can remediate the soil, its
deep roots removing toxins and preventing erosion. It doesn’t need herbicides or pesticides because it grows faster than the weeds and is attacked by no pests here. Studies have shown that because
it grows so fast, industrial hemp can sequester more carbon over time than a forest on the same
area of land.

But despite its many benefits to the environment and human health, the paperwork and logistics around hemp growing can be a bit of a handbrake in Aotearoa. Hemp New Zealand along with others, such as the New Zealand Hemp Industries Association, are working hard on getting
legislation changed so it’s easier to grow.

Claire says there are grower requirements that can be off-putting — anyone who handles the
whole seed (growers and retailers) must apply for an annual license that costs just over $500. Growers must also be police checked because hemp still sits under the Misuse of Drugs (Industrial Hemp) Regulations 2006. The physical challenges are real too: the hemp crop must not be visible from a main road, be protected from wandering people and animals, and the police must be informed of plantings because, to the eye, high-THC varieties and industrial hemp are indistinguishable from each other.

This is all because industrial hemp is Cannabis — the same plant as marijuana, but a different cultivar. To be called industrial hemp, the leaves and buds must have a THC content below 0.35%.
To put it in perspective, the average joint is around 15%.

Hemp is sustainable. It can remediate the soil, its deep roots removing toxins and preventing erosion. It doesn’t need herbicides or pesticides as it grows faster than weeds and isn’t attacked
by pests here.

Fashion forward

While some varieties of hemp produce prolific seed, other varieties are tall and make great fibre
— and some can do both. Hemp as a natural fibre is tough as well as sustainable. The fibres are made into a twine that’s exported and transformed into fine fibres for garments and textiles. Claire says roading company Fulton Hogan has used the hemp fibre as a locally sourced replacement
for the coir matting on roadsides, to prevent erosion and help new plantings get established.

But because hemp fibre is so strong, to process it you need a decortication plant, a specialised machine that separates the tough fibres from the woody core or ‘hurd’. Hemp New Zealand joined forces with Carrfields Primary Wool to import and install one of these machines in the latter’s Christchurch factory in 2021, naming the new joint business New Zealand Natural Fibres. This makes it New Zealand’s only hemp fibre processing plant and is now opening up exciting possibilities for wool/hemp blends and using the hemp hurd.

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Building sustainably

Buildings are responsible for up to 20% of New Zealand’s greenhouse gas emissions (including the building process, energy used while occupied and landscape design) — and hemp seems a good low-carbon and sustainable way to build. Hemp-based concrete, or hempcrete, is starting to pop
up in new-builds in Australia, USA and Europe. 

This textured green stuff is made from hemp hurd, mixed with a lime binder, water and a little sand. It’s packed into the spaces between timber framing and left to harden. It can replace plasterboard, fibreglass batts and plastic sheeting, and just needs a plaster coat over the top to keep it watertight.
It leaves houses as warm as double-glazed windows do, it absorbs sound and is fire resistant.
It’s breathable, antibacterial and deals with humidity well.

It’s also a carbon-negative product. Firstly, the hemp sequesters carbon while it’s growing, which stays in the hempcrete for at least 100 years. Secondly, although making lime emits carbon, the lime can then absorb some of it back gradually after construction, because it absorbs carbon from the air to become limestone. And if the hemp is grown locally, there are less transport emissions to consider.

The builder of New Zealand’s first hempcrete house in Wānaka, Erkhart Construction, says you’d
need just three acres of hemp for an average-sized house and only 4–6 months to grow the crop.

Hempcrete builds are still niche in New Zealand — not enough people know how to mix the hempcrete properly, and there’s not yet the demand to bring the costs down. So currently, most
of the hurds from the Christchurch plant are sold by the Tauriko team by the bale-load and used
as a mulch for the garden, bedding for horses and chickens, or for composting toilets.

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Food for thought

Back at the Tauriko office adjoining the factory, glass of cool hemp milk in hand, Hemp New Zealand systems manager Anton van der Westhuizen is extolling the virtues of taking hemp oil daily — he says it’s cured his old rugby injuries. Just like Venita Campbell beside him, in customer services, who’s no longer suffering from netball niggles. They both speak of repeat customers that can’t get enough of the stuff and the website testimonial page echoes this: morning aches and pains gone using the oil, mobility issues improved…

Health stories and recipes aside, with New Zealand’s commitment to reaching net-zero carbon emissions by 2050, our ‘Building for Climate Change’ programme, rising plant-based diets, and quest for sustainable land use, it seems the rise of the humble industrial hemp plant might be one worth supporting.‍

hempnz.co.nz

Story by Skye Wishart