One in every of Europe’s main hemp firms says it’s abandoning its operations in Romania after 14 years on the bottom.
In response to a actual property discover posted earlier this month, Netherlands-based HempFlax Group B.V. is promoting its agricultural portfolio that features practically 800 hectares of land and farm buildings within the Sebeș–Alba Iulia area in southern Transylvania’s Mureș River basin.
“We are going to retreat from Romania in whole and give attention to our West European decortication operation within the Netherlands and our hemp insulation manufacturing unit in Germany,” CEO Mark Reinders advised HempToday. “We are going to additional spend money on worth including actions so as to help the profitability of the hemp crop.”
Cushman & Wakefield Echinox, the dealer dealing with the sale, stated HempFlax’s exit “follows a reassessment of its strategic focus, the place vertical provide chain integration . . . is most popular over bulk manufacturing.”
What’s it price?
Whereas the asking value was not disclosed, with Romanian farmland promoting for just under €9,000 per hectare, the land alone might convey HempFlax as a lot as €7 million.
Cushman & Wakefield Echinox described the location as a big, compact agricultural holding close to a contemporary processing facility in a acknowledged industrial area. The property consists of contiguous farmland, buildings and equipment, together with irrigation gear. HempFlax retained the hemp processing gear, which it’s relocating, in response to Reinders.
Early entrant in Romania
HempFlax grew its first crop in Romania in 2012, and purchased the 800 hectares of farmland two years later.
In 2015, the corporate invested €5 million in a fiber processing manufacturing unit in Alba County. A christening of the power attended by officers from the Romanian Agriculture Ministry and the Dutch Embassy was extremely symbolic in a rustic that had as soon as been the world’s fourth-largest hemp exporter.
The power, with capability to course of 4 tons of stalks per hour, was equipped by roughly 500 hectares of company-grown hemp for the manufacturing of bast fiber and hurd.
HempFlax operations
HempFlax’s Dutch processing operations are centered at its Oude Pekela web site within the northern Netherlands, the place the corporate runs large-scale decortication and fiber processing strains. Output from the power goes into automotive parts, development supplies and animal bedding.
Its German manufacturing unit is part of the subsidiary HempFlax Constructing Options, 80% of which was acquired by Eire-based insulation big Kingspan in 2023. That unit originated with HempFlax’s 2020 acquisition of Nördlingen-based Thermo Natur GmbH & Co. KG and have become its manufacturing arm for hemp-based insulation mats and boards below the THERMO HANF model.
At its farming peak, in 2015, HempFlax was reportedly managing as a lot as 4,000 hectares of hemp fields throughout Netherlands, Germany and Romania. Beneath the corporate’s strategic shift, it’s now managing simply 600 hectares of fiber crops, which incorporates each hemp and flax, in response to Reinders.
How large?
HempFlax, based in 1993, is without doubt one of the most acknowledged names within the international industrial hemp sector. Whereas the personal firm doesn’t typically launch its monetary figures, it gave a snapshot in a report for 2020, when it put revenues at €14.5 million, a 43% enhance over 2019.
That report highlighted progress throughout enterprise strains and introduced monetary leads to a format much like a public-company assertion. It got here after founder Ben Dronkers introduced on the 2019 European Industrial Hemp Affiliation (EIHA) convention in Cologne that HempFlax would go public. Nonetheless, the corporate has not moved ahead with an inventory.
