HIGH ON HEMP

Cheap and flexible hemp fibres are making their way into more and more
cars. As Jennifer Campbell explains, this is good news for producers of
Ontario's homegrown crop.

Drive a Mercedes, Chrysler or General Motors product? If so, it's
possible you have Ontario cannabis on board.

But don't worry -- no one's accusing you of having drugs in your glove
box or trunk. Instead, your hemp probably takes the form of a door
panel, or some similar interior component.

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's economical. It's also flexible and easy to use.

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's hemp pioneer. He says he was the first
person to produce hemp in "modern times" in North America when, in
1994, he planted a 10-acre test plot with his original business
partner Joe Strobel.

It's an industrial-grade hemp that contains only minute traces of
tetrahydrocannabinol, or THC, the intoxicating substance in marijuana.
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't grow well in Ontario and the two
wanted to try an alternative.

"We learned that first year that there are things you can screw up and we
also learned a lot of positive things," 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."

For Mr. Kime, southern Ontario's perfect hemp climate means big
business. In the mid-'90s, 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.

The timing worked well for Mr. Kime, who now is growing as much hemp
as his operation's infrastructure will allow. North American
manufacturers followed Mercedes' lead. They now want it, and he's
conveniently situated close to the U.S. border. To add to the
attraction, he is the supplier of a commodity that isn't yet legal to grow
in the United States.

"It's not entirely new," Mr. Kime says. "It's been in vehicles here
for three or four years, but it's something that people don't know much
about."

He sends his hemp to suppliers that then sell it to the automotive
industry. For that reason, he's not sure exactly where it ends up,
although he's certain there's Delaware hemp in the Chrysler Sebring.

The manufacturers aren't promoting its use because the primary
motivation is cost rather than public relations, Mr. Kime says.

"The reason they're looking at natural fibres like hemp and flax is that
they're cost-effective and they perform well," 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."

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 is possible to recycle glass fibre, but hemp
is much easier -- although the system to do so isn't ready yet in North
America.

"It's as much the infrastructure to tear cars apart and reuse the
materials as it is the materials themselves," Mr. Kime says.

Nevertheless, he's betting the market will keep growing and to that end,
he's financing an expansion. If an average door panel requires at
least a kilogram of fibre, and many vehicles have four doors, you're
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," Mr. Kime says.

"The automotive industry has come on strong and come on early," he
adds. "It's big business and gearing up to supply it is something
we're really focusing on. There's a good business opportunity there to be
capitalized on."

Hemp may soon also be found on the outside of cars.

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.

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.

Organic materials are hardly new in car construction.

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.

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's floor.

Now, Ford is considering getting on hemp's 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.

She told the Winnipeg Free Press the company is still researching
whether the material will meet industry specifications, but she said
"it's potentially a billion-dollar industry."

For Geof Kime, that sounds as sweet as the taste of ice cream made from
hemp seed.