Colorado Company Making Hemp Paper, Packaging
Colorado Company Making Hemp Paper, Packaging
Fort Lupton, Colorado. PureHemp Technology LLC, a vertically integrated industrial hemp processing enterprise, is marketing hemp business cards, boxes, card stock and packaging materials to companies throughout Colorado and beyond.
PureHemp, founded by parent company PureVision Technology in 2014, is operating and promoting an exciting biorefining technology that rapidly converts stalks into pulp and other valuable co-products to manufacture bio-based products which will replace products currently made from trees and petroleum.
PureHemp has been producing hemp pulp during the past four years and is the first company in the world to produce CBD tinctures from hemp flowers and then use hemp stalks to make boxes for its CBD-based products.
PureHemp initially worked with a Boulder-based company where the hemp pulp produced at PureHemp’s Fort Lupton headquarters was converted into hand-made paper used for business cards, packaging and poster board. During 2019 PureHemp shipped 480 pounds of 100% virgin hemp pulp from Ft. Lupton to a paper mill in Michigan, which made six grades of hemp paper using commercial paper making equipment. As a conservative first step, the hemp was blended with 40% virgin soft wood pulp and 40% virgin hardwood pulp, creating a 20% hemp paper blend. These six different weights of paper are being used to make a variety of boxes and card stock.
“During the past four years we’ve been making hemp paper from stalks on a small scale”, said Ed Lehrburger, PureHemp’s CEO and a veteran hemp industry leader. “With the growing demand for hemp paper packaging, we’ve started working with several paper mills interested in scaling up advanced and environmentally sound pulping technologies. Every pound of hemp pulp used to make paper products replaces one pound of tree pulp taken from forests. Hemp grows to its full size in about 120 days compared to trees that are harvested after 7 to 30 years to make tree pulp. Imagine the impact on our planet!”
Lehrburger, a founder of PureHemp Technology and a staunch promoter of whole plant utilization, serves on the Board of Directors of the Colorado statewide initiative known as the Colorado Hemp Advancement and Management Plan (CHAMP).
“PureHemp Pulp & Paper is now officially open for business, providing hemp-based paper stock and packaging. The paper looks and feels gorgeous. We are seeking companies who want to establish hemp processing infrastructure to utilize millions of pounds of hemp stalks grown in Colorado and around the world, thereby helping to create a cleaner, more sustainable planet ”.
What distinguishes PureHemp in the hemp business space is its advanced pulping technology, referred to as continuous countercurrent reactor (CCR) technology. Using a self-funded CCR pilot plant, PureHemp has demonstrated its biorefining innovation that rapidly extracts the fundamental constituents of the stalks – the cellulose-rich pulp, lignin and xylose-rich sugars – to make many different bio-based products for diverse industries. In addition to producing pulp for papermaking, the lignin co-product can be made into bio-plastics and the xylose sugars into xylitol, the healthiest sugar known to man.
“There are so many benefits to growing hemp in addition to the extraction of CBD from the flowers. Imagine a world where hemp stalks are used to replace products currently made from trees and petroleum. What PureHemp has accomplished is a critical step to create a healthier and more sustainable planet.”
About PureHemp Technology
Based in Fort Lupton, Colorado, PureHemp is a privately owned, vertically integrated industrial hemp processor. In addition to processing hemp stalks, the company has been involved in growing organic hemp, extracting cannabinoids from the flowers, producing premium CBD-infused products and promoting hemp refineries to compete with oil refineries. PureHemp has been processing industrial hemp stalks since 2014 using their advanced CCR-based biorefining technology to rapidly deconstruct a wide variety of agricultural residues including hemp stalks into value-added products including pulps to produce paper products.