*X-Hemp founder Andi Lucas poses in her hemp processing facility with her father in the background. Photo courtesy of X-Hemp.*

By Elizabeth “Boo” Lunt

A Tasmanian hemp entrepreneur and hemp processor ran a crowdfunding campaign this October raising over 1.5 million Australian dollars (about $1 M USD) from over 950 investors.

Now, X-Hemp, Tasmania’s only hemp processing facility, is working with the University of Tasmania and Hansen Yuncken, one of Australia’s largest commercial construction companies, on what will be one of the largest commercial hemp projects ever built, scheduled to begin construction next year in the state’s capital city of Hobart, Tasmania. About 35 hempcrete homes have been built in Tasmania so far, according to X-Hemp.

X-Hemp founder Andi Lucas told HempBuild Mag she was motivated by the “chance to tell the story” of hemp and offer regular people the chance to invest in the new industry. Crowdfunding “democratizes capital,” she said, by offering the investment opportunity for as little as $300AUD. “This is for people who don’t normally invest,” she said, and who want to support the industry. She points out that having the 1.5 million allows X-Hemp to get the rest of the money they need to build out, because once a company has money, it’s easier to get more from traditional sources.

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*Early team, the “Hempettes” (L-R) Nicole Quilliam, Bell Towns, Andi Lucas, Amanda Cowley, Louise Pears. Photo courtesy of X-Hemp*

In starting and running her own company, Lucas has also hired an all-female team which met her goal of supporting women. Now, X-Hemp has raised enough funds to continue building a hemp processing center in Tasmania, and is thought to be the first all-woman hemp processing company in the world.

As part of the new contract with Hansen Yuncken, X-Hemp will be providing 25,000 kilos / 55,000 lbs of hemp hurd for what is known locally as the Forestry Building, and have already started delivering. Expert natural builder Shane Hannan and his team from Hannan Build will bring experienced installers from New South Wales as well as lead a team of Tasmanian builders. There are no weather constraints because they are renovating an interior with curved hemp walls. The space will be home to the College of Business and Economics and Law School. When complete, the building will house 300 staff and support the studies of 3,000 students.

“One project like that from every area in the world and you have an industry,” Lucas said. The University of Tasmania has also committed to using X-Hemp products in every as many subsequent projects as they’re able as part of their focus on maintaining carbon-negative status.

After harvesting over 600ha of fibre last season, this year, Lucas said, X-Hemp has 66 hectares recently planted growing three varieties supplied by EcoFibre: Excalibur, MS-77 and CHY. Seed production is part of their business as well, a need Lucas realized when she saw 1,400 hectares of seed production shrink to just 20 planted in her home state of Tasmania last season. Now while the seed market stabilizes, X-Hemp will occasionally grow for seed as well as hurd, processing the stubble from multiple seed varieties.

The company has come a long way in a few short years. After nearly folding a couple of years ago, due to difficulty accessing capital through traditional channels and no support from government, “in 2024 we’ll have a waitlist,” Lucas said.

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Natural disasters spurred interest in hemp

It was burn resistance that led Lucas to the idea of wanting to throw her professional energy into the hemp industry in her home state of Tasmania. After a devastating pair of housing losses, Lucas says the results of a “red-wine fueled Google search” for fire-resistant building materials convinced her that hemp construction would meet her desire to address “the climate crisis and housing security.”

In 2013, Lucas was living nine months of the year in Colorado and the other three back home in Tasmania. She was working at a company that sold niche camera supplies, which, although successful, was not a passion project.

In January of that year, her cottage in Tasmania burned to the ground in the Dunalley bushfire that ravaged the area. Lucas lost her library of books, items from her grandparents - in fact, everything but the clothes she had on, her purse, her passport and her laptop.

“The speed of the fire was amazing,” Lucas said. Residents in the area were given only a few hours to evacuate and her home was destroyed a short time later.
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*X-Hemp founder Andi Lucas poses with a hemp-lime “hempcrete” wall mock up. Photo by Moon Cheese Studio*

Devastated, she took refuge at her apartment in Boulder, CO. Nine months later, that too was ruined in one of the largest floods in Colorado history, when a storm system got trapped over the area and dropped 9 inches of rain in a day, destroying more than 1,800 homes. Lucas says she considered herself luckier than others despite these terrible losses, and threw herself into seeking a meaningful path for her life.

Seeing the toxicity of the materials her homes were made from – learning about the carcinogens released from traditional building materials in a fire shocked her, she said – made her want to discover something better. Her research led her to hemp.

She had planned to build a hemp house in Colorado, she says, but had to leave the US abruptly in 2019 after the Trump administration gutted the visa offices and she was unable to get her paperwork processed. It turned out to be a blessing in disguise, as COVID came along and she was already safely home in Tasmania, where interest in hemp was burgeoning.

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Lucas volunteered at the Tasmanian Hemp Association – the state’s peak industry body -- and quickly took on a leadership role, learning about growing and supply chain issues. With strong interest in the material and a large planting area already established, it became immediately obvious that the bottleneck was processing capability.

Lucas developed a concept for a company based on an idea put forward by Klara Marosszeky – founder of the Australian Hemp Masonry Company and manufacturer of the nation’s only domestically produced lime binder. She developed a concept for a company and took her ideas on the road to raise funds from locals.

“I would rent a room in a pub and literally pitched people with a powerpoint dog and pony show” she said. Lucas convinced 33 believers to lend her money with a fixed 5% return for three years. Getting the machine was just the beginning.

Lucas and her team also constructed two hempcrete guest villas in Tasmania, Indica House and Sativa House, which she rents out as part of her hemp-building evangelism.

“It’s been a brutal couple of years,” Lucas said “and the most rewarding of my professional life.”