Amdanom ni · About

Building the Welsh
hemp economy.
From the ground up.

Hemp Cymru is not an advocacy organisation. It is not a campaign. It is the early infrastructure of a supply chain: the legal entities, the farmer relationships, the policy architecture, and the processing capacity that a Welsh hemp economy requires.

Welsh farmers harvesting hemp, early twentieth century

Cenhadaeth · Mission

Wales grew it before.
Wales can grow it again.

Hemp has been grown in Wales for centuries. The knowledge, the land, and the climate are all still here. What has been missing is the supply chain: the processing infrastructure, the cooperative structure, and the policy environment that turns a crop into an economy.

Hemp Cymru exists to build that infrastructure. Not to advocate for it. Not to campaign for it. To build it: entity by entity, relationship by relationship, acre by acre.

The goal is a circular Welsh hemp economy: grown here, processed here, used here, with value retained inside Wales at every stage of the chain.

Y diwydiant · The industry

Industrial hemp and the Welsh bioeconomy

Industrial hemp is low-THC Cannabis sativa, grown for fibre, hurd, seed, and biomass rather than for narcotic content. The same plant species appears in many national regulatory systems under a controlled-drugs regime; in the UK, licensed cultivation uses approved varieties and strict record-keeping. The agronomic point is simpler: a single harvest can supply several hemp products at once, from construction materials to food ingredients, because the stalk, seed, and residual biomass each have a market when processing exists.

From the plant to raw materials

Bast fibre from the stalk is used in textiles and technical fibres; it sits in the same family of natural fibres as linen (flax) in how it is spun and finished, though supply chains for hemp are still rebuilding in the UK. The woody core (hurd) is a raw material for hempcrete and animal bedding. Seed oil and hemp protein sit in food and nutrition markets. Surplus biomass can support energy and soil amendments. Historically, hemp was also important for paper production and rope; today the emphasis is on low-carbon construction, nutrition, and industrial feedstocks where provenance and traceability matter.

Wales: land, policy, and timing

Wales has suitable land and a temperate climate for the crop; the limiting factor has been processing and offtake, not field curiosity. The Sustainable Farming Scheme (SFS) aligns payment with environmental outcomes; hemp, as a break crop that can support soil health, diversification, and reduced chemical inputs, can sit alongside livestock and arable rotations without replacing them. That is the Welsh policy window: devolved agriculture, a clear licensing route, and a construction and food sector looking for credible low-carbon raw materials.

Globally, large-scale producers (including parts of the EU and North America) have shown how industrial scale and variety selection move the crop from niche to infrastructure. Wales is not starting from zero on knowledge, but it is starting from zero on integrated processing. That is what this site exists to change: entity by entity, route to market by route to market.

Three entities, one chain

HCO Sir Penfro Limited (trading as Hemp Cymru) is the platform company behind this site: communications, events, and the connective tissue between growers and policy. The Hemp Growers Co-operative is the farmer-owned route to retaining the processing margin. Hemp Processing & Trading Ltd is the commercial processing and offtake vehicle. They are separate legal bodies with one shared aim: value retained in Wales, from seed to raw materials and finished goods.

Hemp harvest in the field, background texture for the structure section

Y Strwythur · The Structure

Three entities.
One supply chain.

HCO Sir Penfro Limited is the operating entity behind this site. The Hemp Growers Co-operative and Hemp Processing & Trading Ltd are in formation. Their legal instruments are being developed alongside the first growing season.

HCO Sir Penfro Limited

Trading as Hemp Cymru

Operating

The public-facing entity behind this website. Responsible for communications, policy engagement, events, and the network infrastructure that connects farmers, investors, and government. This is the entity you are engaging with now.

Hemp Growers Co-operative

In formation

The farmer-owned vehicle through which growers will hold a direct stake in the processing margin, not just the farm gate price. The Co-operative instrument is being developed alongside the first growing season. Growers interested in founding membership should register via the Get Involved page.

Hemp Processing & Trading Ltd

In formation

Processing is where the seed becomes the economy. The former naval depot at Trecwn, Pembrokeshire is under consideration as the site where Welsh-grown hemp is transformed into four tradeable materials: fibre, hurd, seed oil, and biomass. But this is not an industrial operation in the extractive sense. It is the garden in which Welsh micro and small enterprise is seeded. Every output stream is the starting point of someone's business, someone's craft, someone's livelihood. Non-extractive by principle. What grows here, stays here.

Pwy ydym ni · Who We Are

Who we are
behind Hemp Cymru.

Director

James Hunt

James Hunt is a City of London-trained corporate solicitor (now non-practising) and living with his family on a small holding in North Pembrokeshire. He was founder of two regulated law firms and during lockdown was co-founder of the society of free and independent enterprise, knows as Sofie Enterprises, a charity dedicated to supporting small enterprise (business and social). James sees the greatest challenge facing our communities as regeneration and localisation: we must challenge supply chains that support extractive and exploitative industries.

Director

Olwen Thomas

Olwen Thomas is a retired farmer living in Fishguard, North Pembrokeshire. As a first language Welsh speaker, former Farming Connect adviser and community governor Olwen is passionate about the economics of farming, farming as a career for young people and the importance of local circular economies. She sees first-hand, through her family dairy farm the real-world challenges facing the farming community. The Gwaun valley and its farming community has a special place in her heart.

Director

Sam Sharkey

Sam Sharkey is an entrepreneur strongly influenced by his upbringing in North Pembrokeshire. A builder by trade with over 20 years' experience in the construction industry, he is the founder of a specialist renewable energy enterprise, acting as reseller of world-leading technologies including graphene underfloor heating. He has taken a keen interest in the potential of hemp to bring about transformational change for farmers in Wales. With a fascination for big systems thinking and himself the developer of an AI system for the construction industry, he sees the deep potential of Hemp Cymru's Intelligence Platform.

Strategic Adviser

Sonia Klein

She began her career as a research scientist. She became a successful international banker. Neither world satisfied the part of her that understood, with uncomfortable clarity, that the economy and the ecosystem were on a collision course. She is currently completing a PhD at Aberystwyth University in The Political Economy of Hemp.

Then came lockdown. Then came the decision: "We had to step forward." Three years. $1.6 million. A novel, patented process for creating hemp block, the construction material that performs like concrete and breathes like a living wall. Four houses built in Iowa. Wales is next.

Sonia now sits as a Trustee of the Centre for Alternative Technology in Machynlleth, and is Hemp Cymru's Strategic Adviser. Her plans as an entrepreneur include the licensing internationally of the hemp block technology. Hemp Cymru hopes and expects that the very first licensee will be a farmers' cooperative in Pembrokeshire.

Dysgu mwy · Learn more

Building the Welsh
hemp economy.
From the ground up.

Wales grew it before.
Wales can grow it again.