An American company is planning to build a manufacturing plant in Ontario that will turn hemp into a compostable construction material.
American Lime Technology, a Chicago company that specializes in low carbon building materials, wants to manufacture a ready to install insulating product made from hemp at a plant near Toronto, said sales manager Matt Englemann.
Hemcrete, the company’s trademark name for the generic product hempcrete, is used to create insulating walls and non-load bearing walls.
“Hemcrete is not a structural material. It’s used in conjunction with another structure,” said Englemann. “Hemcrete is a combination of the woody core of the industrial hemp plant, bound together with a binder of lime and other natural mineral materials. It’s not Portland cement based.”
Hempcrete doesn’t have the strength of concrete, but it’s much lighter and is breathable, durable and biodegradable. Englemann said that as an insulation, it is superior to conventional products made from fibreglass.
“It’s really got a very unique combination of material properties that make it quite appealing for construction of building envelopes.”
American Lime Technology, the North American marketing arm of British company Lime Technology, has been in business since 2008.
Tradical Hemcrete, the company’s trademarked brand, is poured at a construction site to form walls around the building’s frame.
“We ship the industrial hemp shives in bales and the binder in bags. It’s mixed with water on site and cast into place,” Englemann said.
Hempcrete cannot be cast at temperatures below freezing, so Lime Technology has developed a system in which panels are formed at a plant and then assembled at the construction site.
The proposed manufacturing plant near Toronto would manufacture the pre-cast panels and other hemp construction materials.
Similar pre-cast panels are being used to insulate a new Marks & Spencer store in England, according to Lime Technology’s website.
In North America, American Lime Technology is supplying Hemcrete to construction projects.
A division of Lime Technology is also looking at building a hemp fibre processing plant in Alberta, which may also manufacture Hemcrete.
The leader of the Alberta project wasn’t ready to speak about the plant, saying the company would provide more information this fall.
Jan Slaski, a plant crop physiologist and hemp specialist for Alberta Innovates Technology Futures, has heard about the proposed plant.
“There is an entrepreneur who has incorporated his company in southern Alberta,” he said.
“His main goal, or business interest, is production of biocomposites for biobuilding materials.”
He said it makes sense to build such a plant in Alberta because the provincial government is focused on industrial uses for hemp rather than hemp grain.
“In Alberta, we are taking a slightly different approach to hemp,” he said. “We are developing hemp for fibre.”
Consequently, Slaski and others are developing best agronomic practices for high yielding, high quality hemp fibre. Hemp fibres grown in Alberta may be used to make biocomposites for the automobile and aerospace industries, but most of the short fibre is suitable for building materials, Slaski said.
“Hemp contains two types of fibre: long fibre and short fibre,” he said.
“Long fibre, that is what is used for manufacture of car parts and textile, but 70 percent of the crop is short fibre … the inner core fibre.”
Englemann said hemp is greener than fibreglass insulation because it is renewable and compostable,an advantage if North American jurisdictions create renewable construction standards, he added.
“To have a high performance building solution that can last hundreds of years and still be compostable, is pretty fantastic.”
- Producer
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