Polish Entrepreneur Builds Hemp Textile Company After Success in CBD
This week on the Hemp Podcast, Lancaster Farming talks with Maciej Kowalski, founder and CEO of\xa0Kombinat Konopny, a hemp company based in Elbl\u0105g, a Polish city on the Baltic Sea.
Kombinat Konopny is a vertically integrated hemp operator working both in the herbal and fiber division.
Kowalski said the company takes a no-nonsense approach to floral production and extraction.
\u201cWhich means basically we are not doing extraction, because nature does it best,\u201d he said.
Instead of a complicated chemical extraction process, \u201cwe just mix hemp biomass with olive oil and then press it mechanically,\u201d he said.
\u201cNo distillation, no extraction, no messing with the natural ratios of the cannabinoids. Whatever is in the plant goes into the oil,\u201d Kowalski said, noting that this model runs counter to the mainstream floral hemp industry\u2019s fixation on hemp derived intoxicants like Delta-8 THC.
\u201cI don\u2019t mess with nature. I just put it in a bottle,\u201d Kowalski said.
A separate division of Kombinat Konopny is focused on hemp fiber.
\u201cI\u2019ve been working with hemp flower for more than 10 years now, and hemp stalk has always been an enemy,\u201d he said. \u201cIt was something that ropes around all the bits and pieces. So like five, six years ago, I decided to try to somehow work with it, not against it.\u201d
Since then Kowalski has built a vertically integrated hemp textile company.
\u201cWe are growing hemp. We are harvesting hemp. We are decorticating hemp,\u201d he said.
\u201cThen we are refining the fiber, we spin it into yarn, and we actually make the products out of it,\u201d Kowalski said. \u201cSo it\u2019s a full value chain.\u201d
Before getting into hemp, Kowalski was working as a journalist and was trying to write a story about a Catch-22 in Polish hemp law.
\u201cIn order to grow hemp, you need to be registered in a registry of hemp growers,\u201d he said. But the registry did not exist.
He wanted to write an article that asked some basic questions: \u201cHow can you say that I\u2019m in the registry, if there is no registry, but you cannot grow if you\u2019re not in the registry?\u201d
He applied for the registry, knowing his application would be rejected because there was no registry.
But much to his surprise (and to the detriment of his career in investigative journalism), \u201csome wise person from the ministry said, \u2018Well, the country cannot expect from a citizen to fulfill something that is not possible.\u2019\u201d
In 2014, Maciej Kowalski was granted the first private license issued for hemp in Poland.
\u201cI wanted to show that it is not possible, but I actually proved that it is possible, so maybe I should start doing it,\u201d he said.
From there he built a successful CBD business, which was bought by a Canadian company in 2018, but the sale came with a non-compete clause, so Kowalski was unable to work with CBD for two years.
\u201cSo imagine 2018,\u201d he said. \u201cI\u2019ve got quite a lot of money to invest. I got quite a lot of willpower and knowledge, but I cannot be working with CBDs. So that\u2019s how I got into fiber.\u201d
Also in this interview we discuss winter retting, feral hemp, and how Kowalski took a case to the Polish Supreme Court to prove that hemp does not fall under the EU\u2019s novel food regulations.
Listen here:
Kombinat Konopny
Maciej on LinkedIn
https://www.linkedin.com/in/maciejkowalskihemp/
What's up with European Novel Foods?
https://food.ec.europa.eu/safety/novel-food_en
What Does Maciej think about Novel Foods?
https://kombinatkonopny.pl/court-judgment-hemp-is-not-a-novel-food-it-can-be-used-in-food/
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