Pioneer’s high hopes for SA hemp fall flat
Budding industry has to rely on imports
TONY Budden, owner and founder of Cape-Town based retailer Hemporium, sells hempbased products ranging from cosmetics to homeware to clothing, but complains that restrictions are stunting the growth of the manufacturing sector.
Growing hemp — a product of the Cannabis sativa plant — specifically for industrial use is restricted in South Africa, with any product made from the plant marked as “undesirable and dangerous”, said Budden.
“For 20 years we’ve been doing research on industrial hemp in South Africa and it’s getting stuck in research.
“We can never reach economies of scale and improve economic viability [on crops of] under 2ha,” he said.
In South Africa, not more than 2ha of hemp for industrial use is allowed to be grown.
Budden imports hemp fabric from China, hemp building material from France and the UK, food and nutritional products from Germany or Canada and ropes and twine from Hungary.
“The medicinal and the industrial uses shouldn’t even be under debate any more,” he said.
“We have to separate out the rational uses and look at what other countries are doing in terms of industrial uses and the opportunities that exist for the growth of the economy.”
According to the Hemp Industries Association, the US market for hemp-based products is worth $580-million (about R7.7-billion) a year.
It is legal to grow, process and market hemp in 36 countries, with France and China accounting for 95% of global production, primarily for cigarette paper and textiles.
Although hemp is low in THC — the psychotropic compound found in recreational or medicinal cannabis — in South Africa there is no legal distinction between the two substances.
Tendani Tsedu, group manager at the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research, said the CSIR suggested South Africa’s government adopt the Canadian model where all players in the value chain are licensed and regulated through the Hemp Industries Association so as not to burden lawenforcement officers.
In November last year, South Africa’s portfolio committee on health announced the government’s decision to regulate medical cannabis for prescribed health conditions.
According to BMI Research, the global debate on the legalisation of marijuana will be a key consumer theme for 2017, and legalisation would benefit tobacco companies and food manufacturers.
British American Tobacco declined to comment and the Tobacco Institute of Southern Africa said it “has no current position on the legalisation of HOMEGROWN: South African hemp entrepreneur Tony Budden outside his ’Hempcrete’ house marijuana”.
The benefits are already apparent for medical marijuana companies.
The share prices of Canopy Growth, Mettrum Health, Aphria and OrganiGram have soared 273.3%, 306.29%, 356.7% and 237.9% respectively over the past year on the Canadian Securities Exchange.
Julian Stobbs, the director of social activism at NGO Fields of Green for All, said countries were using different legalisation models for various reasons.
We have to look at what other countries are doing in terms of industrial use
“The US is a full-blown capitalist model of supply and demand, whereas Uruguay’s system of state management sells cannabis at only $1 per gram to stifle the black market.”
But for Budden it’s an opportunity to grow the local industry. “If we were able to do it [grow hemp] locally, it’s a huge opportunity. We currently have to cover the costs of getting everything here and to manufacture everything locally. So we have that extra cost and we are expected to compete with the people who are importing clothing made in China and Bangladesh.”
Budden said Hemporium was involved in growing hemp in Malawi, where proposed legislation to allow the cultivation of industrial hemp will be considered by parliament this year.
“South Africa will fall behind the poorest country in the world [Malawi] when we could have been a world leader.
“We’ve been in business for 21 years and in our five-year plan we didn’t expect to import a product that we can grow locally,” said Budden.
Stobbs is to ask the Constitutional Court to legalise cannabis in a case due to start on July 31.