Hemptown Clothing Inc. announced the acquisition of $1.4 million of equity financing. $1.3 million will be put into Hemptown's subsidiary Crailar Fiber Technologies Inc., and will be used to begin trials on its advanced natural fiber “Crailar”.
The remainder of the funds will be put into general operations and marketing at the parent company, Hemptown Clothing Inc.
In 2004, the company secured a collaboration agreement with the National Research Council of Canada (NRC) to expand its research with a biotech development of an enzyme that would unlock the economic potential of industrial hemp fiber as a cost competitive alternative to cotton. The name of this technology is called “Crailar”.
Crailar is being developed as an advanced, organic, eco-friendly natural fiber, capable of a multitude of commercial applications due to its strength, softness and flexibility. The company has begun working on licensing agreements to bring the new fabrics to market through a select number of top level manufacturing firms.
Jerry Kroll, CEO of Hemptown, commented, “We have produced some very exciting results in the laboratory recently, and will now produce larger amounts of Crailar fiber which will be tested as spun fiber for textiles, as well as shorter fiber for use in advanced natural composite materials. It is now possible for us to run these pilot plant quantities of Crailar for these tests, and potentially even some low volume production runs in Canada and elsewhere to begin cashflow on fiber. This will allow our Crailar customer prospects to begin slowly introducing the fiber into their product mixes, and then purchase ongoing quantities from our licensees or our own Crailar production facilities.”
