{"id":13653,"date":"2003-10-30T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2003-10-29T22:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.bio-based.eu\/news\/index.php?startid=20031030-11n"},"modified":"2003-10-30T00:00:00","modified_gmt":"2003-10-29T22:00:00","slug":"hemp-fibres-on-their-way-into-more-and-more-cars","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/hemp-fibres-on-their-way-into-more-and-more-cars\/","title":{"rendered":"Hemp fibres on their way into more and more cars"},"content":{"rendered":"

Geof Kime, an engineer and farmer, is founder of a company called Hempline<\/a>. Hemp fibres from his company, based near London, Ont., are sold to suppliers for use in automobile door panels and other components. One model Mr. Kime knows contains hemp is the Chrysler Sebring. <\/p>\n

Drive a Mercedes, Chrysler or General Motors product? If so, it\u2019s possible you have Ontario cannabis on board. But don\u2019t worry \u2014 your hemp probably takes the form of a door panel, or some similar interior component. <\/p>\n

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\u2019s economical. It\u2019s also flexible and easy to use. <\/p>\n

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\u2019s hemp pioneer. He says he was the first person to produce hemp in “modern times\u201d in North America when, in 1994, he planted a 10-acre test plot with his original business partner Joe Strobel. <\/p>\n

It\u2019s an industrial-grade hemp that contains only minute traces of THC, and 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\u2019t grow well in Ontario and the two wanted to try an alternative. <\/p>\n

“We learned that first year that there are things you can screw up and we also learned a lot of positive things,\u201d 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.\u201d <\/p>\n

For Mr. Kime, southern Ontario\u2019s perfect hemp climate means big business. In the mid-\u201990s, 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. <\/p>\n

The timing worked well for Mr. Kime, who now is growing as much hemp as his operation\u2019s infrastructure will allow. North American manufacturers followed Mercedes\u2019 lead. They now want it, and he\u2019s conveniently situated close to the U.S. border. To add to the attraction, he is the supplier of a commodity that isn\u2019t yet legal to grow in the United States. “It\u2019s not entirely new,\u201d Mr. Kime says. “It\u2019s been in vehicles here for three or four years, but it\u2019s something that people don\u2019t know much about.\u201d <\/p>\n

He sends his hemp to suppliers that then sell it to the automotive industry. For that reason, he\u2019s not sure exactly where it ends up, although he\u2019s certain there\u2019s Delaware hemp in the Chrysler Sebring. <\/p>\n

“The reason they\u2019re looking at natural fibres like hemp and flax is that they\u2019re cost-effective and they perform well,\u201d 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.\u201d <\/p>\n

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\u2019s as much the infrastructure to tear cars apart and reuse the materials as it is the materials themselves,\u201d Mr. Kime says. <\/p>\n

Nevertheless, he\u2019s betting the market will keep growing and to that end, he\u2019s financing an expansion. If an average door panel requires at least a kilogram of fibre, and many vehicles have four doors, you\u2019re 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,\u201d Mr. Kime says. <\/p>\n

“The automotive industry has come on strong and come on early,\u201d he adds. “It\u2019s big business and gearing up to supply it is something we\u2019re really focusing on. There\u2019s a good business opportunity there to be capitalized on.\u201d <\/p>\n

Hemp may soon also be found on the outside of cars<\/b>
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. (Vgl. Meldung vom 2003-09-30<\/a>.)<\/p>\n

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. <\/p>\n

Organic materials are hardly new in car construction<\/b>
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. (Vgl. Meldung vom 2003-09-29<\/a>.)<\/p>\n

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\u2019s floor. <\/p>\n

Now, Ford is considering getting on hemp\u2019s 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. <\/p>\n

She told the Winnipeg Free Press the company is still researching whether the material will meet industry specifications, but she said “it\u2019s potentially a billion-dollar industry.\u201d <\/p>\n

Copyright \u00a9 2003, The Ottawa Citizen. All rights reserved.<\/p>\n

(Vgl. Meldung vom 2003-01-21<\/a>.)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Geof Kime, an engineer and farmer, is founder of a company called Hempline. Hemp fibres from his company, based near London, Ont., are sold to<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","nova_meta_subtitle":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[5572],"tags":[],"supplier":[],"class_list":["post-13653","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-bio-based"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13653","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13653"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13653\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13653"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13653"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13653"},{"taxonomy":"supplier","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/supplier?post=13653"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}