" It ' s a long way to Tipperary "
-Mark Lucas , Cannasouth
Cannasouth ' s Commercial Cultivation facility incorporating the best of indoor and greenhouse features .
" I
have been involved with hemp since 1995 . My wife and I opened the first retail store , importing hemp products into New Zealand . The founders of Cannasouth Nic Foreman and I received one of the first licenses to cultivate industrial hemp in 2002 .
" It was interesting at the Hemp Summit / Expo to see how things have progressed in the industry . All be it slowly , with a number of barriers still in the way . Industrial hemp products are starting to gain traction now , which is great . The way the regulations have panned out , it ' s not simple for industrial hemp to be used for medicinal purposes .
" Regulations stipulate that we need to produce a product to a ' pharmaceutical quality standard '. Every step needs to be documented and quality controls in place . The flower is a key component in manufacturing the finished product .
44
" When you introduce outdoor biomass , you also introduce a whole bunch of risk factors , that need to be controlled and documented . While not impossible to use industrial hemp , in full pharmaceutical grade products , it is more difficult . And , it takes time to actually set up quality control systems , that are sufficient to manufacture product to get it into high quality markets , like Germany