Turning a new leaf

The newly-declared legalisation of hemp farming within NSW will go some way to meet growing demands for sustainable fibres and fabrics. But how, ask experts, can this promising fibre pave the way for a new TCF industry, when our manufacturing industry has already gone to pot? Melissa Gulbin reports.

Last month the media turned its lens on the Northern New South Wales town of Nimbin, home to the 'Mardi Grass' festival, a weekend which celebrates marijuana and champions its legalisation.

And like every year, the police, the stoners, the activists and the morally outraged all got their 15 minutes on talk-back radio and morning telly before the media circus left the town to resume its status quo.

In contrast, only weeks before, the NSW government announced with little media fanfare a crucial legislative change to industrial hemp (not to be confused with the drug-inducing cultivars). Primary Industries Minister Ian McDonald announced in April the legalisation of industrial hemp farming, the fibres of which could be used, among others, to produce sustainable textiles.

The hemp will be planted later this year, with farmers no longer needing their licences to be approved by the NSW Health Department. The industrial hemp will have only tiny amounts of tetrahydrocannabinol (THC), the psychoactive compound, giving a smoker nothing more than a really, really bad head-ache.

"It could be used as an additive to wool in soft textured durable yarns, for insulation, as an alternative to fibreglass, in paper products and textiles and for load bearing masonry for building," says McDonald.

"Large markets exist overseas for industrial hemp and in Australia some niche markets are already established for products which could use hemp as a component.

"There is growing support from the agricultural sector for the development of such a new industry. This is a direct result of the environmentally friendly nature of industrial hemp and a perceived interest for hemp products in the market."
McDonald went as far as saying: "Industrial hemp fibre produced here in NSW could pave the way for the establishment of a new viable industry that creates and sells textiles, cloth and building products."

Reality check

Whether NSW's new laws will facilitate a new dawn for the textiles industry, however, may best be judged by hemp growers in states like Queensland and Tasmania, who have been legally farming the stuff for some years.
Phil Warner, founder of Brisbane-based Ecofibre Industries, the nearest the hemp industry has to an official body, says if the government doesn't put serious money behind the farming, research and processing of hemp fibre soon, Australia will be squeezed out of the market by Asia and Europe.

"We have a situation in the world where we have a rice shortage and a fibre shortage. Hemp provides both food (from its seed) and fibre (from its stem). That's apart from the fact that hemp is stronger, more durable, cleaner and greener than any other fibre," Warner says.

He states, Australia needs to decide now whether or not it wants to be a country with a sustainable farming and manufacturing industry or "a nice tourist destination for rich Chinese businessmen which has cheap clothes".
Warner suggests we are well on the way to the latter. "Without sounding like a radical, during last decade the Australian government has depleted our manufacturing industry to a point where we've lost the capacity to rebuild it."

He claims that if the cotton and wool industry can't support a processing and spinning industry then what hope has a start-up like hemp in building a manufacturing industry from scratch, with no tax-breaks, subsidies or support within government. "I'd say that the likelihood of hemp being, grown, processed, spun and made into cloth wholly in Australia is extremely unlikely."

Manufacturing aside, the "clever country" is doing little to foster research and development when it comes to hemp-based textiles, according to Warner. "Universities will only get on board for studies if we put up at least half the costs."
The present research structure of the CSIRO also requires financial outlays that growers just don't have. "Funding research is pretty impossible when you [the start-up hemp-growers] don't have returns to start with," says Warner.

Warner sees potential however in the natural anti-bacterial properties of hemp fibre, envisioning a day when all fibres in hospital theatres, from surgeon's gowns to wound dressings, are made from hemp.

"The savings on the health system in preventing staphylococcus outbreaks would be huge." Whether that is an Australian-driven development is another story.

Only recently Ecofibre Industries pitched the anti-bacterial properties to hygiene giant Kimberley-Clarke. "They thought it was a great idea. Only thing was that they had already put 50 million into pine plantations. But that's the realities of big business. That's what we are up against."

The development of an official body, complete with the tax-breaks enjoyed by competing NGO's would certainly benefit everyone involved in the hemp industry. Warner says we will see in the next 12 to 24 months if we can create an association. "Growers are being very guarded. Everyone is trying to protect what little they have to survive." Warner hasn't given up all hope however. "Australia certainly has the capacity to develop high-end technology to assist in the textile fibre business."

The art of hemp

German-born Beatrice Kuyumgian-Rankin found herself so outraged by the misconceptions surrounding hemp, that she gave up her career as a classical pianist to co-found The Hemp Gallery, which wholesales and retails hemp products, including an array of hemp fabrics.

When she heard about the history of hemp in the US and Australia, how it was demonised as the "evil weed" marijuana and eventually eradicated in the 1930s by those with financial stakes in the synthetics and timber industries, she says it made her blood "boil".

"We have a situation in Australia where the hemp plant is still very misunderstood. Hemp clothed this country's settlers and carried the First Fleet with its sails but when I first came here the only hemp product you could get was a beer-holder with a marijuana leaf on it." So with her New Zealand-born husband Ray Rankin, she embarked on a mission to present hemp products as artfully as possible.

"We had no experience in the fashion industry so we started importing fabrics and designing bed sheets. We figured it's a square. You can't go wrong."

She says consumer perception of hemp fabrics lags behinds the advances made in finer hemp blends such as Yak hair/hemp and the new weave called Santorini, made from hemp and recycled, rewoven PET bottles, which has a similar feel to poly-cotton.

The Hemp Gallery's hemp canvas fabrics are proving popular with accessories and soft furnishing designers says Kuyumgian-Rankin. Recently canvas weights were made available in a variety of new colours. Prices are fairly competitive with other natural fibres she says. Cut fabric ranges from $10 to $33 - "much less if you are buying by the roll".

Like Warner, the Hemp Gallery owners see that the anti-bacterial, non-allergenic, fire-resistant properties of hemp have glaring potential. "Hemp is also 97 per cent UV resistant, so if we are so 'sun smart' in Australia why are we still making our school uniforms from cotton?" she adds.

In comparison big brands in Europe are already benefiting from the strength and durability of hemp. In Germany, hemp is used to make Chrysler's upholstery as well as door trim, replacing synthetics made from petro-chemicals, a finite resource.

Meeting demands the green way

Lauded for its environmental-friendly properties the sustainable crop needs fewer pesticides and chemicals in farming and processing than cotton and has a superior oxygen production and carbon sequestration rate, reducing global warming. However, with limited local funding for research there is little to back claims as to the water efficiency of the crop, particularly in regard to processing.

According to Cotton Australia in the past there has been a lot of mud-slinging from the hemp camp in regard to the comparative environmental merits of the natural fibres - most of which Cotton Australia says is unsubstantiated.
Cotton Australia spokesperson Brooke Summers says Australian cotton is grown under a strict set of environmental guidelines. Chemical use in the cotton industry has been reduced by over 90 per cent in the last decade - cotton uses about the same amount of pesticides as other summer crops such as corn and sorghum.

"Industries like cotton and hemp should be banding together to promote natural fibres and their properties against the biggest market threat - synthetic fibres.

"The global fibre market is set to double over the next decade, with demand currently expected to be met by oil-based synthetic fibres that are taking an increasing share of the market. While the worldwide demand for cotton is also increasing and currently exceeds supply (an expected 115 million bales produced next year falling short of the predicted 123 million bale demand), both cotton's and hemp's challenge is to take back market share from synthetic (non-renewable) fibres that attempt to develop properties similar to natural fibres.

By Melissa Gulbin