Pubdate: Fri, 24 Oct 2003
Source: Ottawa Citizen (CN ON)
Copyright: 2003 The Ottawa Citizen
Contact:  http://www.canada.com/ottawa/ottawacitizen/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/326
Author: Jennifer Campbell

HIGH ON HEMP

Cheap and flexible hemp fibres are making their way into more and more 
cars.  As Jennifer Campbell explains, this is good news for producers of 
Ontario's homegrown crop.

Drive  a  Mercedes,  Chrysler  or  General Motors product? If so, it's 
possible you have Ontario cannabis on board.

But don't worry -- no one's accusing you of having drugs in your glove 
box  or  trunk.  Instead,  your hemp probably takes the form of a door 
panel, or some similar interior component.

Hemp is being heralded as a miracle fibre. With more than 25,000 uses, 
its  seeds  or  fibre can be found in clothing, paper, lip balm, paint and 
salad dressing.

And  cars. More and more manufacturers are using natural fibres in the 
composites  they  use  to form the basis of automobile interiors. Flax 
and  kenaf  are  two  popular  fibres  for this, but hemp is coming on 
strong.  Above  all,  it's  economical. It's also flexible and easy to use.

Enter  Geof  Kime, an Ontario engineer who grew up on a farm. As owner and 
founder of a company called Hempline, Mr. Kime finds himself in an 
enviable  position as Ontario's hemp pioneer. He says he was the first 
person  to  produce  hemp  in "modern times" in North America when, in 
1994,  he  planted  a  10-acre  test  plot  with his original business 
partner Joe Strobel.

It's  an  industrial-grade  hemp  that  contains only minute traces of 
tetrahydrocannabinol, or THC, the intoxicating substance in marijuana. 
Although  it  was  illegal to grow hemp in Canada at the time, the two 
entrepreneurs  secured  a  special permit from Health Canada after Mr. 
Strobel  determined  kenaf  wouldn't  grow well in Ontario and the two 
wanted to try an alternative.

"We learned that first year that there are things you can screw up and we 
also learned a lot of positive things," says Mr. Kime, who is based 
in  Delaware,  Ont., near London. "We learned that Ontario had all the 
right  conditions  to  grow  good  qualities  and  high yields of hemp fibre."

For  Mr.  Kime,  southern  Ontario's  perfect  hemp  climate means big 
business. In the mid-'90s, while he was devoting his energy to getting 
the  Canadian  government to sanction hemp-growing (it took five years 
to   get   that   far),   Mercedes-Benz   was  starting  to  introduce 
European-grown hemp into its interiors.

The  timing  worked well for Mr. Kime, who now is growing as much hemp 
as   his   operation's   infrastructure  will  allow.  North  American 
manufacturers  followed  Mercedes'  lead.  They  now want it, and he's 
conveniently  situated  close  to  the  U.S.  border.  To  add  to the 
attraction,  he is the supplier of a commodity that isn't yet legal to grow 
in the United States.

"It's  not  entirely  new," Mr. Kime says. "It's been in vehicles here 
for  three  or  four  years, but it's something that people don't know much 
about."

He  sends  his  hemp  to suppliers that then sell it to the automotive 
industry.  For  that  reason,  he's not sure exactly where it ends up, 
although he's certain there's Delaware hemp in the Chrysler Sebring.

The  manufacturers  aren't  promoting  its  use  because  the  primary 
motivation is cost rather than public relations, Mr. Kime says.

"The  reason  they're  looking at natural fibres like hemp and flax is that 
they're cost-effective and they perform well," he says. "Compared 
to  glass  fibre, the cost of production is lower but the strength and 
ratio  is  roughly  comparable  so  we  can  get  excellent mechanical 
properties at a much lower price."

Hemp  is  typically  less  than  half the price of glass and its light 
weight is also a benefit. To a smaller extent, manufacturers are drawn 
to  the  environmental benefits, a plus that played a much bigger role 
in  Europe  where,  by  2005,  every vehicle part has to be capable of 
being  completely recycled. It is possible to recycle glass fibre, but hemp 
is much easier -- although the system to do so isn't ready yet in North 
America.

"It's  as  much  the  infrastructure  to tear cars apart and reuse the 
materials as it is the materials themselves," Mr. Kime says.

Nevertheless,  he's  betting  the market will keep growing and to that end, 
he's financing an expansion. If an average door panel requires at 
least  a  kilogram of fibre, and many vehicles have four doors, you're 
up  to  4.5  kg of fibre per vehicle. Considering there are 15 million cars 
produced annually in North America, the numbers add up to "a heck of a lot 
of material," Mr. Kime says.

"The  automotive  industry  has  come on strong and come on early," he 
adds.  "It's  big  business  and  gearing up to supply it is something 
we're really focusing on. There's a good business opportunity there to be 
capitalized on."

Hemp may soon also be found on the outside of cars.

Until  now,  materials reinforced with hemp were not strong enough for 
use  as  body  panels.  But  two Canadian researchers, Mohini Sain and 
Bhuwan  Prasad  of  the  University  of  Toronto, have discovered that 
heating hemp to more than 180 degrees leaches out the natural glues in hemp 
and makes its fibres much stronger.

According  to the Oct. 11 issue of New Scientist magazine, the treated 
fibres  could  be  used  in  hemp-reinforced plastics that would be as 
strong as fibreglass composites, at less cost.

Organic materials are hardly new in car construction.

Henry  Ford  was  an  early proponent of soybeans as an ingredient for 
interior  fittings  and  even  body  parts,  prompting jokes about the 
farmer who left his Model A too close to the goat pen.

More recently, cotton fibres reinforced the body of the notorious East 
German Trabant, and even the sophisticated Chevrolet Corvette contains 
high-density  balsa  wood grown in Ecuador. The light, strong material is 
sandwiched between layers of fibreglass in the sports car's floor.

Now,  Ford  is  considering  getting  on hemp's bandwagon. At a recent 
Winnipeg  conference,  Ellen Lee, a plastics technical specialist from 
Ford  Motor  Co.,  gave a presentation on the use of hemp fibre in car parts.

She  told  the  Winnipeg  Free  Press the company is still researching 
whether  the  material will meet industry specifications, but she said 
"it's potentially a billion-dollar industry."

For  Geof  Kime,  that  sounds as sweet as the taste of ice cream made from 
hemp seed. 
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MAP posted-by: Perry Stripling