Hemp startup bets on transparency with new farm in Oregon

06-Jun-2019 - Last updated on 06-Jun-2019 at 16:09 GMT

Exactas photo

Hemp startup Exactus says it is leveraging the agricultural expertise in its management team to secure high quality raw material with a new planting in Oregon.

Exactus, which reported putting its first tincture on the market in February, announced recently that it has planted 200 acres of hemp from seed purchased from a supplier called Oregon CBD.

Experience in Uruguay

Managing the transaction is Exactus president Emiliano Eloi, who pioneered hemp production in Uruguay in 2016. According to the company, Eloi also worked on chia and stevia cultivation in South America, with one of the projects, a chia effort in Paraguay, being taken over by Cargill.

Eloi said the new farm, which the company calls Exactus One World, will boost the company’s transparency bona fides.

“We want to help strengthen the Southwest Oregon community in a way that emphasizes the rich culture, resources, and climate that is so important to developing the sustainability necessary to produce a number of proprietary CBD derived products we plan to introduce from Exactus later this year,” he said.

Eloi said in a business that now has many hundreds if not thousands of competitors, brands will need to have ways to stand out. Questions are already being raised about the quality of products on the shelf. A recent test by the National Center for Natural Products Research found that of 25 CBD products that were purchased on the open market in Mississippi, few met label claim for CBD content. And some had too much THC in them while one tested positive for a synthetic cannabinoid.

Transparency as differentiator

Eloi said being able to prove what’s in the bottle and where it came from will be paramount for brands that want to survive what is likely to be a tumultuous shaking out period in the market.

“Our real differentiation will be transparency to the end user,” Eloi told NutraIngredients-USA. “We will be able to prove where the seed has been grown and where was it transplanted to how the plants were grown in the field to what kind of third party tests were performed.”

Exactus’ go to market strategy included launching its first tincture under the Hemp Healthy brand name. Additional products, using the raw material from the Oregon farm, are planned for 2019, the company said.

Additionally, in March Exactus finalized a deal for the purchase of buyhempcbd.com, which will act as the company’s online transaction portal.