This week on the industrial hemp podcast, Lancaster Farming talks with Scott Evans, executive vice president of Panda Biotech, a Dallas-based company whose High Plains Hemp Gin in Wichita Falls will be one of the largest hemp processing facilities in the world when it opens this year.

Evans said the processing technology comes from Europe and has a throughput of 10 metric tons per hour.

As you might expect from a hemp gin in Texas, “It is a large line,” Evans said, “To my knowledge, the second biggest in the world, next to one in France.”

The hemp gin is located six miles from the Oklahoma border, making it centrally located for growers in several states, including Kansas and Missouri.

But Evans said, for now, Panda is working mostly with farmers in Texas and Oklahoma.

“We need about 25,000 acres to run this facility around the clock once we ramp up and are at full scale,” he said.

According to USDA, only 6,850 acres of fiber hemp were gown in the U.S. in 2022.

“So while it sounds like a lot,” Evans said, “when you take a step back and look at other commercial crops, it’s really a drop in the bucket here.”

“Texas planted, I think, 8.5 million acres of cotton last year,” he said.

Evans said Panda Biotech now gives cotton farmers another option.

“We’re looking for them to have another crop they can put into the rotation that’s going to be profitable, that’s going to use less water,” he said. “And it’s also going to regenerate the health of their soil.”

Production at the Texas facility will focus on textile for denim.

Evans said hemp blends well with other fibers, adding “durability and other attributes to the denim or twill, khaki, or whatever it’s going into.”

Panda Biotech aims to deliver a clean, mechanically processed fiber without the chemical de-gumming process.

“That really helps keep the sustainability story that’s driving hemp intact,” Evans said.

Panda Biotech is an offshoot of Panda Energy, a Texas-based company that specializes in building and running power plants, a business run by the Carter family.

Panda Biotech chairman and CEO Bob Carter knows how to build things at scale, Evans said, citing Carter’s leadership in nearly two dozen power plant projects around the world.

“We’re not getting in this business just to build one processing center,” Evans said. “As we get this one dialed in, we’ll start looking for other strategic locations where we can expand the company based on offtake and agriculture.”

To which Lancaster Farming replied,
“Pennsylvania is a wonderful place. Just throwing that out there.”

Panda Biotech https://www.pandabiotech.com/

 

 

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