London-based investment firm Chrystal Capital recently announced a £7m private placement investment in Change Agronomy, a sustainably focused company in the legal hemp market. The investment opportunity provides investors the chance to contribute to hemp as an eco-friendly solution to climate change. With a market estimated to reach US$26bn by 2025, the legal hemp market operates in North America and 30 other countries. Change Agronomy supplies carbon-negative products to multiple global end markets, including automotive, textiles, bioplastics, packaging, biofuels, and healthcare.
The company owns the rights to seven premium hemp genetics globally and has a seed propagation facility in Italy that facilitates global supply at a large scale. It has grown 9,600 acres to date, with 44m pounds of hemp biomass on-site at a fully operational state-of-the-art hemp facility in Canada. Change Agronomy's ability to provide different end fractions from the hemp plant to various industries has led to numerous customers queuing to access these products.
An acre of hemp sequesters around 10 tonnes of carbon every 100 days, compared to a rainforest taking two and a half tonnes every 20 years. With governments, companies, and investors all looking to get to carbon net-zero by 2050, industrial hemp cultivation provides a major solution to global warming. Hemp is a great solution for multiple different global industries from textiles, bioplastics, and electric cars, as hemp bioplastics can degrade in 72 days, not 1000 years.
Kingsley Wilson, founding partner at Chrystal Capital Partners, believes that Change Agronomy is going to generate significant revenues and profits in the very near term, making it a strong driver of shareholder value and upside for investors. The global hemp supply chain is forecast to grow to US$25bn by 2025, making it one of the fastest-growing sectors in the world. Wilson thinks that more companies wanting to use sustainable hemp end products will spring up across all these different sectors, and there will be more demand for what they produce at large scale.
With carbon offsetting set to become a significant contributor to the reduction of emissions across the economy, the potential for Change Agronomy to create carbon credits will be a key component of its future growth. Governments are behind the move towards sustainability, and the company can receive relatively low-cost funding or government funding to help fuel its growth. Additionally, there are companies that want to buy credits to absolve themselves of their polluting practices. Therefore, Wilson thinks the carbon credit market will become a significant part of all of this, and Change Agronomy will be a major source of credit. This makes the farming and operation side of the business potentially free, and the profitability of the company can increase dramatically.