Three titans of the North American hemp industry announced Monday that they had joined forces to build out the U.S. hemp supply chain.
Geoff Whaling is the Pennsylvania-based chairman of the National Hemp Association who is credited with launching the first Hemp Industrial Park in the Southern Tier of New York State.
Bruce Linton is the founder and former CEO of Canopy Growth Corp. (CGC), the world’s largest cannabis company and the first marijuana firm to be listed on the New York Stock Exchange.
Tim Saunders was Canopy Growth’s executive vice president and chief financial officer.
The trio — all Canadian-born — announced the formation of Collective Growth and said the new company had received preliminary approval from the Securities and Exchange Commission to raise $150 million in an IPO on March 17 on the NASDAQ market.
The funds raised by Collective Growth will be used to build decortication (fiber extraction) and processing facilities in the United States.
Both Whaling and Linton played a significant role in getting industrial hemp legalized in the U.S. in 2018.
Though farmers embraced hemp enthusiastically after it was legalized, many found that there was no market for their crops because there were very few places to have it processed into a marketable good. [Read More @ Philadelphia Inquirer]
