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Local innovator finds new uses for hemp
John Cox, The Bakersfield Californian
5 min read
Jan. 1—The hemp craze that seized the imagination of Kern's ag industry four years ago may have worn off, but a local transplant from New York is making another, equally ambitious run at it from a whole different angle.
Inside a 20,000-square-foot factory in Shafter that was originally designed to produce cement, inveterate tinkerer Ronald Voit is turning hemp fiber into strong but lightweight construction materials — drywall and two-by-fours — unlike anything else on the market.
His product has almost nothing to do with the CBD market that in 2019 made Kern County California's hemp capital. That is, he values the product not for its oil or its cannabidiol but its hurd, which is the stalk material that historically has been a waste byproduct that farmers would till back into their soil after harvest.
His company, Foreverboard, has attracted enough interest, Voit says, that supply poses a bigger challenge for him than demand. Now, as he gears up formal materials testing later this month, he is working to round up money from investors for construction of another manufacturing plant near Sacramento and, potentially, additional installations around the country.
Hemp has long been recognized for the strength of its fiber, which made the boom-to-bust CBD market something of an irony. The plant used to be grown for rope, but in recent years past it was prized more as non-psychoactive cannabis alternative that many believe has medicinal properties.
When demand for CBD failed to meet expectations, prices dropped and a new crop of Kern growers took losses. Kern Ag Commissioner Glenn Fankhauser said local production dropped from more than 10,000 acres to, now, fewer than 1,000.
Farmers seem to have "really put the cart before the horse," he said, adding that there may eventually be a stronger market for hemp fiber.
Voit's central pitch, apart from Foreverboard's light weight and strength, is that his whitish aggregate is superior to gypsum and wood because it is not combustible or susceptible to mold and insects will not eat it.
In a sense, the company's secret lies not in hemp fiber — cotton works about as well, he said — but in the magnesium oxide he uses in place of petroleum-based compounds used in domestic construction materials.
The idea is that, while conventional drywall holds moisture in a way that can promote mold, organic material treated with magnesium oxide releases water molecules in the form of vapor, much the way old buildings in Asia and Europe have for centuries.
George Swanson, a building biologist based in Austin, Texas, who has collaborated with Voit, said use of magnesium oxide-based construction actually dates back millennia to ancient China and the Great Wall itself.
He said he persuaded Voit years ago to quit incorporating styrofoam beads in his drywall, and that since he did, Swanson has used Foreverboard's drywall for construction of homes for people sensitive to petrochemicals.
Hemp hurd is an attractive, unique material free of sugars, acids or oils, Swanson said. There remain market challenges, he said, but eventually hemp as a construction material could catch on in the U.S. building industry.
"Right now, for building materials, nobody's ordering enough bulk to stabilize the markets," Swanson said. "They will in the future, for sure."
The more familiar hemp-based construction material is called hempcrete, a cinder-block alternative that predates Foreverboard. Voit has avoided hempcrete production, unconvinced it will gain industry acceptance.
The Fresno County company Voit gets his hemp hurd from, Western Fibers, processes the material using a converted cotton gin. The company grows and harvests the hemp for use in construction of so-called tiny homes.
Business Development Officer Wade Atteberry said there's still not much of a market for hemp buildings yet, even as he sees the product as an environmentally friendly material that locks up greenhouse gas indefinitely. But he sees great promise in Foreverboard.
"This is as disruptive a product that has ever been introduced to the sheet rock industry since sheet rock has been around," Atteberry said.
Voit turned to the Riverdale hurd supplier because he couldn't find hemp growers in Kern who hadn't already walked away from the crop.
"Everybody jumped on it and they over-flooded the market," Voit said. "They quit growing."
Originally a carpet installer from Buffalo, N.Y., Voit's involvement in hotel renovations led him to acrylic siding and the bed manufacturing industry. He has been working on Foreverboard for about 20 years, constantly revising his list of ingredients and manufacturing process.
The two-by-fours he makes take nails and screws without splitting, and they don't rot, he said, adding that his 8-foot by 4-foot drywall sheets don't twist or chip. He declined to say what all they contain.
"I put stuff in the board you would never guess in a million years," he said.
Since moving to California from Buffalo about six years ago, he has had to redesign the would-be cement plant repeatedly, putting in his own mixer, cutter and sensors. He said he's ready to replicate it in Northern California at a cost of $12 million to $15 million, with a capacity for turning out 7,000 boards per day of drywall. If he can raise the money necessary to build it, he said, he'll begin operation there within about nine months.
But that's only the next step. He hopes to raise many millions more, possibly through joint ventures, so he can build additional plants as far away as the Carolinas and Canada.
He said the reason he got into building materials was that he watched his former neighbors' house in Buffalo go up in flames one snowy morning years ago. That made him think it was a good time to stop using combustible walls.
"This is ridiculous," he said. "We build like we built in the 1800s."
