Wisconsin — Nemadji manufacturing is set to be the largest hemp oil processing facility in North America, with its flagship facility located in Osceola, Wisconsin. Nemadji is on track to establish 1-ton per day mini mill hemp processing factories throughout the country for the extraction of crops in addition to their flag-ship location. Offerings are expected to be in high demand as hemp crops begin to mature in early to late fall.
Nemadji Launch Timeline
“We are here to serve the farming community with high value services,” Says Mel Welch, Nemadji’s general manager.
“Many farms are looking to replace their soy/corn crops with a rotation crop that will yield large dividends. However, often the farming community needs experts to come along side them to enable the conversion and give them access to markets.”
The company expects to open on September 15th, with a 2-ton per day capacity while building to 3,900-tons per year by early 2019.
“Our capacity is not limited the way other toll processors are limited,” says Welch. Nemadji has exclusive access to a variety of customized high throughput processing equipment that utilizes clean CO2 for extraction.
Equipment and Infrastructure
“We selected United Science for full processing solutions as they are able to deploy multi-ton-per-day facilities in an extremely small area, with low power, low variable cost, and high throughput.”
United Science builds ExtraktLAB extractors, DrainDroyd filtration equipment, and Pure99 separation equipment.
“We have also been successful at negotiating for deployment of the Pure99 separation technology,” Welch revealed. “This chromatography technology will enable separation of cannabinoids at scale and at low cost.”
Clean CO2 is Still the Preferred
Welch had looked at several technologies before selecting CO2. “Deployment, operating costs, infrastructure, employees and cost per gram are all extremely competitive compared to ethanol based extractions.” Says Welch, General Manager of Nemadji.
“We found that ethanol is not selective and will dissolve basically everything in the plant given enough time and temperature. Also, we were not interested in having to build and run what amounted to an ethanol refinery.”
CO2 is a green technology as it is not considered a hydrocarbon; also, it is not considered VOC or HAP by the EPA.
Plus, it’s vapors are not explosive! Food grade CO2 is used today in food and beverage processing around the world and it is sourced as an industrial byproduct. That makes CO2 the greenest solvent on the market.