2 NEW MEXICO HEMP COMPANIES MERGE

Farm to build $25M Mesa Del Sol facility

New company’s leaders believe combination of grower and exchange will accelerate growth.

Two prominent New Mexico hemp companies are joining forces in an attempt to offer a wider array of services from seed to sale.

Santa Fe Farms, a hemp grower and processor, announced last week it had acquired Fathom New Mexico, a hemp exchange founded by former Democratic gubernatorial hopeful Jeff Apodaca. Leaders of both companies characterized the acquisition as a partnership designed to spur future growth, with Apodaca coming onboard as Santa Fe Farms’ vice chairman.

Apodaca and Santa Fe Farms CEO Steven Gluckstern said their goal was to build a more vertically integrated company that could help propel New Mexico’s hemp industry forward.

“We think hemp and the hemp industry is going to be a huge boon for all of us,” Apodaca told the Journal.

Apodaca and Gluckstern met earlier this year, at a socially distanced get-together on the beds of pickup trucks in Santa Fe.

Fathom offers a mix of services for hemp operations across the region, ranging from trimming assistance to helping them find end markets. While Gluckstern said Santa Fe Farms is too large to need the services for itself, he saw that the two companies had complementary needs, and were both looking to expand.

“I recognized that Jeff had identified a whole market that was very interesting,” Gluckstern said.

Under the new organizational structure, Fathom’s operations will be rebranded as H47, an homage to New Mexico becoming the 47th state in 1912. Other than the name, Apodaca said very little will change for the approximately 25 growers across the southwest that have sought out the company’s services.

Additionally, Apodaca said H47 will begin producing its own hemp as well, incorporating technology from Santa Fe Farms designed to help with horticulture.

For Santa Fe Farms, which harvested 25 acres of hemp in New

Mexico last year, the plan is to dramatically scale up production in its second year. Gluckstern said the company plans to harvest between one and two million plants across about 150 acres this fall.

To support the expansion, Santa Fe Farms is planning to build a $25 million, 100,000-square-foot facility at Mesa Del Sol. Gluckstern said the facility, which will house processing, extraction and laboratory equipment as well as warehouse space, is expected to be up and running by early 2022.

While the hemp industry’s explosive growth in recent years has largely been powered by demand for CBD, both Apodaca and Gluckstern see uses for the crop in other markets as well, ranging from textiles to plastics.

“Over the next three to five years, we’ll see manufacturing jobs based on this industry popping up in New Mexico,” Apodaca said.

Gluckstern added that he expects more consolidation as the industry matures. Moving toward a vertically integrated model, where a company handles each point in the supply chain, will help companies stay ahead of the curve in a competitive industry, Gluckstern said.

“Both Jeff and I recognize ... that getting large can help you in terms of sustainability,” he said.